Austrian GP qualifying winners and losers: Russell shines as Antonelli pays the price

George Russell is the big Winner after qualifying in Austria, as he used all his wisdom to capitalise on a mistake from Kimi Antonelli.

Here is PlanetF1.com’s full list of winners and losers from the 2026 Austrian Grand Prix qualifying.

Austrian GP qualifying winners and losers after George Russell takes pole

Winner: George Russell

“There may have been a factor of that,” George Russell admitted after qualifying, when asked if he believes he’s been overdriving of late.

It’s been a tumultuous period for the veteran British driver, who has had to deal with some on-track misfortune while also wondering whether his future is about to ripped from under him if a certain Dutchman does decide he’d look better in a black race suit (although it now appears the door to a potential Mercedes switch is closed).

Toto Wolff had come on the radio to tell his driver to enjoy driving the car, and Russell duly delivered a scintillating pole lap that saw him comfortably have the edge over the two Ferraris and had Kimi Antonelli admitting the British driver’s time was out of reach.

There are clear signs that Russell has emerged from the general malaise he found himself in up until Monaco, with Barcelona marking a turnaround that was undone by Mercedes’ front wing adjustment mistake in the pits.

As the data revealed post-session, the vital 22 seconds between the emergence of the single waved yellow flag and the double waved yellow flags that ended qualifying was the window in which the two Mercedes driver negotiated Turn 9 after Max Verstappen had crashed.

Russell used all his experience to absorb the situation: he noted that it was a single yellow, knew he didn’t need to abort, slowed through Turn 9 (by 0.08 seconds), and quickly got on the radio to explain what he had done.

It’s something similar to what Mika Hakkinen did to great effect at the 1999 Monaco Grand Prix, covering off the technicalities of a yellow flag by raising his hand in acknowledgement but continuing about his lap to take pole position.

“It’s a corner where you can see quite a lot, and I just did a huge lift and I was going to assess the situation as soon as I got to the corner, if the car was there,” Russell said later.

“But as it was a single yellow, I was pretty confident there was no danger. And as soon as I turned into the corner, I already saw the green up ahead, and I actually thought the car had continued, because I didn’t see the car at all.

“It was so far off the track, I didn’t see the car whatsoever. It was only when I saw the replay afterwards, I saw it was well off into the wall. So yeah, I was glad common sense prevailed there.”

Of course, there is the obvious question of whether a pole lap set under a yellow flag is a great look for F1, and Russell’s explanation as to why it was all perfectly okay did ring hollow, given he was hardly going to say otherwise under the circumstances.

But Russell played the game perfectly, conformed with the technicalities of the rules by ‘backing off’, yet still put in a lap faster than anyone else – what does that say about the true extent of Mercedes’ pace?

Loser: Kimi Antonelli

Antonelli lost out by giving in to his own sense of responsibility in backing off and aborting under the yellow flag, not realising he didn’t need to do so.

Part of this was down to a rare moment of confusion caused by his race engineer Pete Bonnington getting in Antonelli’s ear by saying, “Yellow, yellow,” over team radio.

Between this and Antonelli looking at the marshal for more detail, admitting he somehow ‘saw’ and interpreted it as a double yellow, he duly backed off: a moment of cognitive overload for a driver still comparatively wet behind the ears.

Antonelli can only be commended for this decision, despite it being a mistake, given the effect it had on his starting position: it’s handed a big advantage to Russell as the pair are separated by the two Ferraris, and Antonelli was understandably downbeat after the mistake in comprehension he’d made.

The implication of this is not a good one, however. With Antonelli making it clear that he thought the situation needs review, and that the double waved yellows would have been a better option for everyone, will drivers now feel incentivised to continue at unabated speed under a yellow flag under they are 100 per cent certain it’s a double waved yellow and everything is neutralised?

Antonelli losing out by erring on the side of safety may have been a mistake, but it was the right thing to do.

Winner: Ferrari

It may have been a “tough day” for Ferrari on Friday, but the Scuderia bounced back strongly on Saturday as it is now establishing itself firmly as the second-quickest team in F1.

Ferrari was likely on for third and fourth place overall had Antonelli finished his final flying lap properly, which would have been a competitive showing in itself.

But the mistake from Antonelli means the two Ferraris start from second and third, with Charles Leclerc stemming the flow of momentum on Lewis Hamilton’s side by pipping his teammate to the front row.

Leclerc reckoned he left some time on the table, given his desire for a clean qualifying, but wouldn’t have had the quarter-second he needed to beat Russell regardless.

“The car is feeling good and I think the team is pushing like crazy at the moment, which is really nice to see,” Leclerc said, on a weekend in which Ferrari introduced chassis updates alongside its new ADUO-updated power unit homologation.

“In Barcelona, we had a big package, but everybody is pushing like crazy to try and produce those upgrades as quickly as possible and bring them to the track also as quickly as possible. And it’s definitely paying off, so that’s really good to see.”

As for Hamilton, he made a mistake at Turns 1 and 3 on his first flying lap, costing himself the run, but bounced back on his single attempt to slot in behind Leclerc.

With McLaren seemingly not keeping the pace as the cars get upgraded, Ferrari’s step forward has become evident, and, while Pirelli believes Sunday’s race is another toss-up between two and three stops, Hamilton said the gap to Mercedes may be slightly too big at the Austrian venue.

“I think this weekend we’ve not been confident that we could fight for a win,” he said.

“These guys have been six tenths quicker than us most of the weekend. We closed the gap overnight three tenths, but we still are three tenths down today, or two-and-a-bit tenths down today.

“It’s going to be very tough to challenge them tomorrow, but with a long run down to Turn 3, hopefully together we can. It’s great having Charles here as well, because we can hopefully work together in a strategy and try to apply pressure to them.”

Loser: Max Verstappen

Verstappen ended his qualifying in the wall after an uncharacteristic loss of control that suggested more than a simple driver error.

Turning into Turn 9, the rear of the Red Bull came around with remarkable ferocity, giving the four-time F1 World Champion no chance to save it.

Thankfully unhurt, a bemused Verstappen retreated to the paddock to explain that he didn’t really understand what had happened.

“The dynamic of the incident was quite unusual,” team boss Laurent Mekies said after the session.

“We lost aero performance on the rear of the car, and it gave Max no chance to survive.

“As a team, we take full responsibility for it and apologise to him.”

The positives for Verstappen are that he did appear to be in the hunt for pole position, having just gone purple in the second sector before his crash. Certainly, it appeared as though he was in the fight with the Ferraris with his upgraded Red Bull, and this may explain why the Dutch driver was relatively chipper despite the circumstances in which his session ended.

The nature of the crash, coming in a section in which a driver “takes measures” to ensure the straight-line mode active aerodynamics have reattached before turning into the corner, may just draw a little bit of extra attention onto the rotating wing designs of the Red Bull (and the Ferrari) – while the mechanisms to switch between straight and corner modes are fast enough to be within the regulations, there is the question of whether there’s enough margin being left to ensure full aero load recovery has completed before the driver turns in.

As for Isack Hadjar, qualifying in eighth in the second Red Bull, he said his feeling from the upgrades is “not good”, and was unable to hide his disappointment at not being comfortable on the brakes.

More from the Austrian Grand Prix

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UPDATED: Untelevised Mercedes team radio emerges after Russell sets Austrian GP pole

Winner: Aston Martin

The end result may not be encouraging, given that Alonso’s best time was a second off what Cadillac could manage, but the Spaniard was visibly thrilled by what he felt had been a significant step forward in execution.

“I think we made huge steps on drivability, on gearbox, downshift, upshift, and energy consistency,” he explained after climbing out the car, his positivity being in stark juxtaposition to what the result may have suggested.

“I think the deployment has been a little bit inconsistent for the first part of the year, so we got to qualify, and on every lap you have a different speed on the straights and approaching to the corners. I think we put a lot of emphasis here to improve that, and I think it was the first quali of the year that I had the same deployment all three laps.’

“I think the steps we did since FP1 to Quali, they were very encouraging, and we are at the back of the grid, but the team is still working like if we were fighting for points.

“It’s very difficult to get demotivated (sic), when you are last every weekend, but on the team, no one is giving up, and they are working to improve the car every session. So, from the team, from the driver point of view, you know, it gives you that motivation as well to don’t give up, because they are not giving up.”

Stroll, who qualified behind Alonso, seemed less enthusiastic and, initially, had grown impatient as he went to walk away from the media pen after the driver before him fielded questions.

Upon being called back by the Aston Martin press officer, Stroll acknowledged Alonso’s positivity by saying, “We know where we are, so we just keep pushing”, before declining to go into further detail as he emphasised the team’s focus on improving the situation.

Loser: Williams

A double Q1 exit for Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon was unsurprising, given the visible sliding the two drivers were having to contend with behind the wheel.

“We’re nowhere, honestly, we’re nowhere this weekend,” Sainz summed up glumly after taking 17th place.

“So we don’t expect nothing special tomorrow. We just need to make sure that we learn as much as we can tomorrow, and we put our hopes on a bit of an upgrade package for Silverstone that hopefully should improve the situation.”

While Sainz may be urging his management team not to tempting him with offers from elsewhere as he aims for the summer break before weighing up his future, such weekends of struggle (“a really, really bad one,” in his words) aren’t likely to do much to convince him that success awaits in the near future.

While he was happy with his lap, one he judged as “full beans”, the car simply lacked the pace to go any further.

As for Albon, in 18th, he judged his weekend as “pretty strong” as he felt that the car was giving him more than he’d expected, but admitted that it’s “on the edge” in terms of balance.

With upgrades coming to the car at Silverstone, after a weekend in Austria where Williams is one of just two teams not to have brought any, maybe there is some light at the end of the tunnel as the team seeks to reduce weight, reduce drag, and improve high-speed corner performance.

Winner: Liam Lawson

It’s a week in which the Kiwi has had to shake off speculation about his F1 future once again, following an erroneous report that Nikola Tsolov is to take his seat at Racing Bulls, but Lawson proved on Saturday once again why it would be very foolish of Red Bull to cut him loose at this point.

Lawson is a driver transformed this year, with confidence begetting confidence as he continues to pop his car into the upper midfield race after race.

Arvid Lindblad has been no slouch either, keeping pace with his more experienced teammate, and he did the same again on Saturday as the duo took ninth and 10th, although the rookie driver admitted that he wasn’t “super happy” with his own performance, although chose not to share why that was.

But, on race pace, Alpine does seem to have the measure of Racing Bulls and, with Pierre Gasly starting from 11th, it’s likely that this will be another intriguing battle behind the leading four teams.

Having overcome braking issues from Friday into Saturday, the Faenza-based squad is clearly on top of what is clearly a tidy race car, and the squad is emerging as the dark horse of the midfield battle with the likes of Alpine and Audi.

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