The arrival of rain at the Las Vegas Grand Prix helped a handful of teams to some dragon-slaying heroics in qualifying – yet it was Formula 1’s form driver who walked away from it all in the pound seat once again.
Here’s our pick of winners and losers from Friday in Las Vegas.
Loser: Oscar Piastri (5th)
Piastri’s latest setback was a new one as ending Las Vegas qualifying only fifth fastest continued a trend of the stars simply not aligning for him during this run-in.
It’s been hard to gauge his pace through practice due to FP2 disruptions and rain in FP3. Then, come qualifying, incredibly challenging conditions but a slowly drying track made like-for-like comparisons impossible.
At his best, Piastri looked very quick and even a pole contender. At other times, though, Norris seemed to have him at arm’s length yet again.
Whatever the reality of their underlying pace here, the weekend has translated into yet another Norris pole and Piastri set to line up on the grid with too many cars between him and his title rival. – Scott Mitchell-Malm
Winner: Lando Norris (1st)
When it counts, in this form, Norris delivers.
He was strong throughout qualifying but his final lap might have been a second clear of the rest of the field had he not had a small moment in the last sector where he had to lift to plant the rear.
His surprise at scoring pole and assumption that no one else put a full lap together points to the fact he thought that moment had cost him dearly, but really, he was so good before it that it didn’t matter.
Under the pressure of the title fight and on an ice-rink of a Vegas circuit, Norris delivered once again. Any questions about his early-season form seem like a lifetime ago. – Jack Benyon
Loser: Lewis Hamilton (20th)
Any of the three things that went wrong for Hamilton at the end of Q1 could have been enough to derail his qualifying. So he had no chance of surviving all three.
Getting caught out and hitting a bollard at the end of his prep lap, and it getting stuck under his car for an unknown amount of time, was not a great start and compromised his pace on what turned out to be his final lap.
Encountering yellow flags on that lap, when it was potentially marginally good enough to sneak into Q2, spoiled the attempt.
And then immediately aborting his last lap, thinking he had not crossed the line in time before end of the session, was a potentially costly confusion seemingly born from the timing line being located just before the main gantry that houses the lights he saw turn red.
“This year’s definitely the hardest year,” said Hamilton – and qualifying 20th is probably the hardest result to take yet given how happy he had been in the car through practice. – SMM
Winner: Carlos Sainz (3rd)
Now there’s no longer any doubt about Sainz’s speed in the FW47, the bigger question is whether there are signs of an internal power shift at Williams.
Alex Albon obviously has a very good body of 2025 work behind him, and what happens at the final three rounds of the season won’t change perceptions of his campaign. But on single-lap pace at least it’s Sainz who now appears the more comfortable of the two, or at least more likely to extract the car’s potential.
You could argue he was fortunate to escape a penalty for rejoining unsafely in front of Lance Stroll – the fact there was no further action seems to be in some part down to Stroll and Aston Martin’s input at the summons – but Sainz played his way through qualifying supremely well to claim third.
He felt the switch to intermediates for Q3 allowed others to catch up – but many of the midfield overachievers had reason to feel similarly. And ultimately, of all of the drivers in that boat, it was Sainz whose performance held up best across both tyres. – Jack Cozens
Loser: Alex Albon (16th)
It seems that whenever Sainz has a heroic qualifying, Williams team-mate Albon must have a shocker – as if their results were on each end of a seesaw.
Albon had been pushing to try to make it into Q2 when he whacked the wall at Turn 16 correcting a slide.
He complained that – before the crash – it had been his only clean lap in qualifying as he kept catching traffic, then after the crash he scalded the team for too much radio communication. He admitted after the session that had been a “heat of the moment” reaction.
It’s never nice to get beaten by your team-mate. It’s even worse when that team-mate qualifies in the top three twice in a year, and in those same sessions you hit the wall in Q1 both times. – JB
Loser: Yuki Tsunoda (19th)
It’s only Hamilton’s woes that spared Tsunoda last place on the grid with a Q1 showing that, at face value, looked well lacking.
But Tsunoda looking so bafflingly far off wasn’t all it seemed: Red Bull accepted it had made a “big mistake” with his tyre pressures that “basically gave him no chance to be competitive”.
Tsunoda felt he’d had “amazing pace all weekend” prior to that, and team principal Laurent Mekies said it was “painful to have taken his chance away”.
And even if Tsunoda’s claim needs some scrutinising, such glowing reviews have been so rare for him that not being able to capitalise on that due to a team error really was the last thing he needed. – JC
Winner: Racing Bulls (6th & 8th)
After a double-points finish in Brazil, Racing Bulls qualified sixth and eighth in Las Vegas to continue that form.
Liam Lawson came out on top – as he did in Brazil – taking sixth, ahead of Isack Hadjar, who had a much more eventful Q3.
He almost crashed trying to avoid Piastri at Turn 12, who had in turn slowed for yellow flags.
Hadjar said Piastri “slowed down way too much” on the radio, but Piastri could see Charles Leclerc returning to the track ahead.
Even if Hadjar lost the chance to improve, he still managed eighth. It’s a good start to the weekend for Racing Bulls constructors’ battle where it is sixth, 10 points ahead of Aston Martin. – JB
Loser: Kimi Antonelli (17th)
Antonelli followed up a weekend of finishing second in every session in Brazil by going out in Q1 in Vegas, but there was more to his first visit to this circuit.
He was on a lap good enough to make it through to Q2 when he locked up and went into the runoff area.
A small consolation – bigger for his team-mate George Russell in fourth – is that the team avoided any serious penalty for allegedly failing to send in its set-up sheets to the FIA before qualifying.
Mercedes proved to the stewards that it had sent them, and the stewards report confirmed it was an “IT security issue” that prevented the FIA from receiving the documents. – JB
Winner: Pierre Gasly (10th)
This isn’t quite the same peak that Gasly’s achieved on Fridays here for the previous two years.
But this isn’t the same quality of car, relative to its opposition, that Gasly’s had at his disposal here for the previous two years either.
Sure, the rain probably helped, and the race might be a different proposition altogether considering the straightline speed demands of the place.
But Gasly’s been quick all weekend and he showed once again that, when conditions allow, the driver can make the difference. – JC
Loser: Lance Stroll (12th)
The track just wasn’t quite ready for Stroll’s Q2 intermediate tyre gamble.
One more lap on them and it might well have come good. But it was the sort of gamble you’d reserve for someone on the outside looking in, not someone who’d looked supremely comfortable on the full wet; staying on that surely would’ve guaranteed his passage to Q3.
Instead, Stroll did end up on the outside looking in, and extended his run of grand prix qualifying defeats to Fernando Alonso – when a rare intra-team Aston Martin win looked absolutely possible. – JC
