Winners and losers from the 2026 Chinese Grand Prix Qualifying

Kimi Antonelli tops PlanetF1.com’s list of Winners from qualifying in China, but who else features, and who has made the Losers list?

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

Winners and losers from the 2026 Chinese Grand Prix qualifying

Winner: Kimi Antonelli

The young Italian may still show signs of his inexperience from time to time, but there’s no doubt that Antonelli has the skills needed to be a very prominent player in Formula 1 over the coming years.

Whether 2026 is that year remains to be seen, particularly against a teammate of considerably more experience who has honed his craft to be ready for the opportunity this year represents for the Mercedes drivers.

After a scruffy Sprint race, Antonelli didn’t put a wheel wrong in qualifying as he took his first proper pole position in Formula 1, following on from his Miami Sprint pole last year.

Breaking Sebastian Vettel’s record from Monza 2008, set when Antonelli had just turned two years old, his life was made a little easier by the technical issues hitting George Russell’s side of the garage, but Antonelli still had to deliver.

His first laptime was beaten by Russell’s only attempt, meaning that it was his second lap – the one Russell didn’t get – that proved critical for Antonelli to take top spot.

Crucially for Mercedes, Antonelli is cognisant of the balance he needs to strike this year, a season in which he’s highly likely to win his first race and, assuming Mercedes’ pace advantage holds, could see him emerge as a title contender.

“It’s hard because you know you have such a great opportunity, you know, having such a quick car,” he said after taking pole position.

“You don’t want to miss the opportunity, so you go for it but, in my case, I’m still learning how to improve the risk/reward ratio, especially in sessions where the result doesn’t really count, such as FP3, for example.

“So it’s up to then be able to keep the momentum going. It’s about [putting] things together, even in a qualifying session, having a clean run from Q1 all the way to Q3, I’m still trying to find my way to see how I can achieve that, because still, at the moment, I feel like maybe I do a good Q1 and Q2, then maybe Q3 is not good enough. So just need to find some improvements in there.”

Antonelli lacks the depth of experience Russell has, which automatically puts him on the back foot against the British driver, but can his talent and speed prove a worthy opponent to Russell?

Loser: Red Bull

The question mark hanging over Red Bull at this early stage of the season is whether or not the Milton Keynes-based squad is truly a frontrunner any longer.

While it’s become an assumption over the last decade that Red Bull will at least prove sufficiently competitive to be a race winner, if not title contender, this is a very different organisation to the one that existed as recently as 12 months ago.

With the 2026 regulations marking a hard reset, almost all of the momentum that could be kept up from the building blocks put in place at the start of the last regulation cycle has now dissipated, and it leaves the new leaders out front representing the efforts of this season.

And it hasn’t been a great start. An unexpected gremlin wrecked Max Verstappen’s race weekend in Australia when he crashed out in Q1, while his Sprint was ruined the instant the lights went out when he fell to the back of the field when his car bogged down off the line.

With zero points from the Sprint, his qualifying position isn’t much better as he claimed eighth place; the Red Bull’s pace is demonstrably behind the top three teams and, concerningly, even bested by Alpine’s Pierre Gasly.

While some of that may be down to Mercedes engine superiority in this new power unit-dominated formula, Verstappen’s criticisms have not been levelled at the power unit; instead, all of his concerns have been pointed at the handling of the RB22.

Worse, despite changing the setup dramatically between the Sprint and qualifying, Verstappen explained that little had changed in terms of his feel behind the wheel, suggesting that the car may be at its natural limit – no one could ever doubt that Verstappen isn’t maximising the car that’s under him.

This limitation is further borne out by Isack Hadjar’s impressive performance relative to Verstappen, qualifying ninth and just a single position behind his teammate with a time a tenth slower.

While the curse of the second Red Bull seat looks like it may be over, with Verstappen’s advantage not as wide as has been the norm in recent years, that ‘curse’ was only evident due to Verstappen being able to prove the inherent pace of the cars under him in a way the second driver never could.

With the second driver now keeping pace, has that trade-off come with the expense of the RB22 simply lacking in outright performance?

Winner: Lewis Hamilton

Ferrari is hanging gamely on to the back of Mercedes to the point where it can be a thorn in the side for the Silver Arrows.

That’s one positive for Fred Vasseur’s team, but the other is that Lewis Hamilton really and truly does appear to be back on his game.

It can only be a good thing to have the two Ferrari drivers pushing themselves to higher highs, with Charles Leclerc now forced into the position of having to fight for the number one position he so effortlessly commanded over the past two seasons.

If the Monegasque ever thought Hamilton had been mentally broken by the events of the last few seasons, seeing his head drop more and more, the fight Hamilton put up in China showed just how much of the ‘old’ Lewis is starting to show itself, now that the pesky ground-effect regulations are no longer a hindrance to his style of driving.

Hamilton has never been one to mask his emotions, and his buoyant mood at present suggests he’s finally getting answers to a lot of questions he had about his own abilities as his self-confidence was shook.

As for Leclerc, he’s fighting a different beast now, and it’s one who has proven capable of winning seven titles already. If the machinery is truly under them both, to the point where a title challenge is possible, can he keep Ferrari’s loyalties focused on him?

Loser: Williams

“Terrible!” was Alex Albon’s succinct summary of qualifying, after he and Carlos Sainz were knocked out in Q1.

Albon was four-tenths of a second slower than Sainz in Q1, with Sainz’s side of the garage making clear progress overnight to take “steps in the right direction”, according to team boss James Vowles.

Albon’s side didn’t make that same step but, ultimately, the performance of the Williams team in general hasn’t been what might have been expected of a team that concentrated so heavily on ’26 from so early a starting point.

As the slowest of the Mercedes customers, there’s been plenty of speculation about just how overweight the new car is, following pre-season rumours of it being some 30kg heavier than the weight limit.

“We can’t hide behind the weight because, at the end of the day, there are other cars that are up on weight also,” Albon said.

“Definitely not as much as we are, but they’re still overweight, and the deficit to these teams is not just that. There are a lot of balance issues in the car. We haven’t seen the downforce as well, so it’s an accumulation of things.

“The weight is one thing; there are also plans, in conjunction with the weight loss, to get the car a bit more in balance and add downforce.”

Having looked like it had managed to catch up on the midfield through its reliable lappery during the Bahrain test, it’s evident that the FW48 currently lacks the pace to make it past Q1 and, rather than this year marking a step forward for the Grove-based squad, it may have fallen down the order once again.

More from the Chinese Grand Prix

Lewis Hamilton claims Mercedes ‘party mode’ 2.0 explains qualifying dominance

Lando Norris calculates straight-line deficit as McLaren chases Mercedes power answers

Semi-winner: The F1 2026 regulations

After the hellscape that was the Australian Grand Prix, the driving during the Sprint and qualifying in Shanghai does appear far more natural.

It’s far from perfect; listening to the cars peter out on speed and power halfway down the long back straight is disappointing, and there are still examples of lift and coast happening – for instance, into Turns 6, 9, and 11.

The Sprint race also showed that the ebb and flow of drivers utilising their energy to pass each other continued, with neither Hamilton nor Russell able to defend against their rival as the cycles played out.

It still all feels very fake and soulless, lacking in importance or substance, but, in terms of creating surface-level excitement and TikTok highlight reels, the combination of the new rules and the Sprint format is working well.

The evidence being produced this weekend is that there is some potential to these regulations; if the energy concerns can be addressed, whether that be through a reduction of peak output at the trade-off of ultimate laptime, or through a future regulation change to allow for further regeneration opportunities, there is some hope.

This situation will continue to evolve from circuit to circuit; some tracks will be awful for these regulations, while some will mask some of the fundamental flaws that have been baked into the rulebook.

Shanghai is one of the latter and, while not ideal, at least it’s a weekend that proves the new regulations are merely an obstacle to be overcome, rather than the crux of an outright crisis.

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