winners-losers-2026-monaco-grand-prix-qualifyingKimi Antonelli is the big Winner after qualifying in Monaco after a minute of magic, but who else features on the PlanetF1.com Winners and Losers list ahead of the Grand Prix? Here is PlanetF1.com’s full list of winners and losers from the 2026 Monaco Grand Prix qualifying. Kimi Antonelli and George Russell headline Monaco qualifying verdict Winner: Kimi Antonelli Has there been a more impressive moment in Kimi Antonelli’s short F1 career so far than his final moments of Q3 on Saturday in Monaco? Going toe-to-toe with the best in the business in Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen, both of whom had already put in eye-popping performances to snatch what looked like a heavyweight front row, Antonelli put it all on the line and came out just four-hundredths of a second ahead to take the most critical pole position of the year. It’s astonishing what a difference 12 months can make. At this same circuit a year ago, Antonelli was out after Q1 following a mistake that saw him bring out the red flags and damage his car. But, with him being in a vastly different headspace now compared to then, Antonelli threw caution to the wind and beat two of F1’s greatest at one of the sport’s most pressure-filled challenges: there is no other circuit at which every single thousandth of a second is more important to find in qualifying, and he accomplished it. “This is one of the most intense, if not the most intense qualifying sessions of the year, and it takes a massive effort, also in practice, because you just keep trying to get close to the limit,” Antonelli said. “Then it’s about finding the last two tenths, it’s not easy because the walls start to come closer and it’s not easy to gain the confidence. But I have to be honest, I felt great this morning and I’m happy that we could finish the job today. “It was one of those laps that we call the magic lap.” Not only that, but he did this magic on a day where George Russell proved comparatively anonymous in the second car, only adding further weight and credibility to the championship onslaught the young Italian is unleashing, against many expectations. But Sunday awaits, and it’s a different game altogether. Up against the might of Verstappen and Hamilton off the line, maintaining track position is key like no other weekend: if he can keep his nose clean, the chessboard is set to give Antonelli a 50+ points lead in the title standings. It’s in that keeping his nose clean that the challenge awaits. No matter how controlling or dominant a performance Antonelli puts in, there is not a single moment at which he can afford to relax. The slightest lapse of concentration, the smallest of misjudgements, and all that hard work, momentum, and potential, vanishes in a heartbeat. Unfortunately for Antonelli, the question mark about his overall inexperience will linger over him for the entirety of the season. Every time something isn’t optimised, it invites scrutiny: is it possible to have completed the learning process of becoming a complete F1 driver with just one season of ‘practice’? It seems unlikely. However, as Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher have proven on the streets of Monte Carlo, even experience sometimes counts for nothing. Can he bring home Monaco’s greatest prize on Sunday, and firmly establish himself as the driver Mercedes should be putting its weight behind? Loser: George Russell It’s difficult not to feel somewhat sorry for Russell. As resilient as he is, and as pragmatic as he can be about the misfortunes he’s encountered so far this year, the self-doubts must be starting to creep in. After all, even in Montreal, a track at which he’s a proven expert, Russell simply couldn’t escape Antonelli’s clutches at any point before technical gremlins put an end to his day. While he lamented that the “gods don’t want him in this fight”, there’s no higher deity that Russell can point to following his qualifying performance, as he simply… didn’t join in the party at the front. Using words like “bamboozled” afterwards as he revealed to media that he’s “scratching his head” over why he doesn’t have the pace Antonelli unlocked, the British driver said, “It’s clearly something with my driving that’s not helping the car at the moment.” “I think there’s clearly a difference in driving style between the two of us, which has been there last year as well. It played into my hands very well last year and it clearly is playing into his hands perfectly well this year, but it still doesn’t answer why I was so good at the start of the year and so poor now. “So we need to look at why that is. It’s clear in the data. The difference is how we’re driving has such an impact on the tyres. He’s just getting the tyres in a nicer window than me. A nicer balance over the course of a lap and the pace is just coming easier for him. I don’t know why that is.” What’s worrying for Russell is that there is a trend developing: in Miami, he suggested his pace disparity was down to the smoothness of the circuit and expressed confidence of bouncing back in Montreal. While he did, Antonelli was equally as fast and, no matter the circuit characteristics – even at somewhere as idiosyncratic as Monaco – the Italian is popping up with a Verstappen-esque relentlessness. The pressure is on Russell. Should Antonelli win on Sunday, Russell is guaranteed to leave the principality at least 50 points adrift in a title fight he may have been expected to crush this year. With the pack behind considerably closer, Russell can’t assume that being marginally behind his teammate time-wise will give him second place and, added to that, if the likes of Verstappen or a Ferrari driver do prove consistent enough to be a championship threat, Mercedes is unlikely to repeat the meal of a title fight that McLaren made last season. At what point does Antonelli’s lead become big enough for Russell to be told to play second fiddle and, in doing so, all but end his status as a number one champion in waiting? Winner: Max Verstappen Give Max Verstappen a sniff of pole position, and he’ll invariably take it. That’s exactly what he did on Saturday, coming out on top against the much-fancied Ferrari and ahead of the subdued McLarens and Russell. It wasn’t until Antonelli’s last-gasp magic, a feat Verstappen himself has accomplished so often himself, that the Dutch driver was relegated down a spot, but there was nothing left on the table for the Red Bull driver as he pragmatically reviewed afterwards. “Sometimes you are just ahead, sometimes you’re just behind, that’s life,” he said. “But for me, I was happy with my lap. So, when I crossed the line, I was like, “OK, if someone beats that, fair enough. That’s part of it.” “And we just came up short. But like I explained, we had a very difficult FP3, so to be in that final quali, great effort from the team.” With Verstappen knowing he hadn’t left anything behind, there’s little to pick apart from his performance: with Red Bull having been playing catch-up on setup from FP3, his contentment with meeting his own standards suggests pole position was just a step too far. But Saturday was perhaps the first moment in Verstappen’s decade-long career, despite his own youth, that the Dutch driver perhaps became aware that there is now a genuine contender behind him that could yet prove to be his match. Is Antonelli the driver from the next generation that will, one day, ‘topple the king’, as Verstappen himself did at the start of this decade? With Verstappen honest as always, he paid Antonelli his dues: “I think you see a few guys grow up from younger categories that have something special and when they switch categories, they are immediately quick. “I think that was quite clear with Kimi, so that was not a surprise. But then, of course, when you get to Formula 1, it’s not only talent. Things have to come together. “You need to become a more all-around driver and then, of course, you need to have the package to be able to do it. But I think this year he’s showing that once he has a package that can do it, he is delivering as a driver. So that’s great to see and that’s what he has to do.” Imagine a Verstappen vs. Antonelli battle developing from here… now there’s a salivating thought. Loser: Charles Leclerc Having appeared to have shaken off his Monaco curse over the last two years, it returned with a literal bang on Saturday. Forced into doing two quali laps at the end of Q3, he made an error through Tabac on his final attempt and hit the barriers, destroying the right-rear corner of his car. Granted, it could have been a lot worse: fourth place is far from disastrous but, given the ease with which Ferrari started the weekend by controlling practice, the 2024 race winner might have expected more. He explained afterwards that he had known going into qualifying that he was just trying to feel confident, rather than actually being confident, saying he knew he and Ferrari hadn’t hit their stride ahead of the critical session. “The fact that on braking I just don’t really know where to brake still… but I wouldn’t put the mistake only on that, it’s for sure a combination of things. Sometimes it’s only me; I think today it’s a bit more than only me,” he said. “Just as a team, and on my side of the garage, it’s been a very messy weekend. We’ve had quite a lot of issues, we’ve had a lot of issues in Q3 as well. Probably nothing that people realise, but to go out of the box much earlier… there was a bit of a mess in the garage. “But then luckily we kind of got back onto the track, and I knew I had two laps. I tried everything on the second lap, and it’s life. I didn’t finish the lap, and that’s it.” With Hamilton again showing that he seems to have dusted off the cobwebs of some difficult and inconsistent past seasons, Leclerc will need some luck to salvage a podium from a race that, without some fortune, is now likely unwinnable. Winner: Lewis Hamilton In that other Ferrari, Hamilton was actually somewhat disappointed to have only ended up third, perhaps reflecting just how his own expectations appear to be realigning as his performance has taken a notable step forward this season. “Tough for us,” he said afterwards. “I think we were looking so strong in practice and we barely changed anything, but the car was drastically different once we got to qualifying for some reason, so we have to take a deep dive into that.” With he and Ferrari attempting to rebalance the car by way of front wing adjustments through qualifying, the recovery back to Friday’s performance level wasn’t possible, and Hamilton said he was somewhat mystified by how the feeling of the car had changed. “I don’t think we went the wrong way with set-up. That’s the thing,” he said. “The tiniest tweaks, like a millimetre here, a millimetre there. The tiniest tweaks. But we really need to look into what switched because the car was completely different to what it was before and I didn’t have any rear end for some reason, which I’d had, good balance most of the weekend. “So yeah, I do think with the pace that we had yesterday, I think we could have been closer.” But, moreso than the headline result that Hamilton achieved, it’s the fact that he came out ahead of Leclerc again and joined in the fight at the front once more that proves this is a different driver to the lost Lewis of recent. More from the Monaco Grand Prix Winner: Liam Lawson A somewhat unexpected Q3 appearance from Lawson, at a track where it looked like the top 10 in qualifying might be a step too far for the Racing Bulls team. The Faenza-based squad headed to Monaco anticipating that Q3 might be possible but, after a difficult Friday, this looked to have slipped away. Lawson explained afterwards that his Q2 lap had been a “very good lap” and praised the team for the recovery from Friday, revealing that the team would need to investigate just why it had started from “so far away” in practice. Loser: McLaren Following on from the disappointment in execution that was Montreal, this weekend appears to be more fundamentally down to a lack of overall grip and performance for McLaren, which doomed Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri to seventh and eighth place grid slots. With Norris being the defending winner of this race, repeating his 2025 feat appears impossible, and the reigning World Champion spoke afterwards about how this weekend is representing a “reality check” for McLaren. With McLaren’s stronger performances having been at higher-speed circuits, Norris explained, “I didn’t have high hopes this weekend. The car is just very difficult to drive, not very compliant, not very forgiving in any way. So, my confidence level last year was 100 – now it’s 85 and, around Monaco, you need it to be 100. “It’s just grip. It’s nothing more than that.” Loser: Audi Having fared well in practice, and appearing capable of fighting at the front of the midfield, the German manufacturer fell short once qualifying began. Gabriel Borteleto made a mistake in Q1 that damaged his Audi, clipping the inside of the chicane, and he was matter-of-fact about underdelivering on the potential of the ca.r “The pace, I see that it was there. It’s not that I felt that we had less pace,” he said. “I made a mistake, I pushed a bit too much in Q1, where there was no need, because we had a car easily to go through Q1, at least, so you can take a little bit more margin, build up some confidence into qualifying, and I just pushed a bit too hard. “But I was feeling similar to FP3, so I’m sure the pace was going to be there. It’s just a shame that I was not able to deliver what the team deserved. “It was a very tiny touch, but it’s not even about the touch, it’s about why should I take that much risk in that corner that we have seen drivers already breaking the suspension in the past? “I would say this was a mistake that I’ve not seen myself doing often, but I need to reanalyse a bit myself and understand why I was pushing that much so early in quali. “I saw that the car was good the whole weekend, I was so excited to put a good quali there, and I pushed more than I needed to, probably that’s how I see it.” While both cars did make it into Q2, despite Bortoleto’s damage meaning he took no further part, Nico Hulkenberg didn’t make it much further: he qualified 13th and said he had a “question mark” over him after he felt the grip level had “plateaued” right when he expected it – and needed it – to ramp up. Want to be the first to know exclusive information from the F1 paddock? 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