While the challenge of Suzuka may have been blunted by the 2026 rules, the action clearly hasn't diminished as there were some excellent storylines to keep fans in qualifying.

Whether it was Max Verstappen being eliminated in Q2 - and sent there by Red Bull's latest starlet at Racing Bulls - Mercedes finding another level in the final laps despite McLaren's resurgence, or even the team at the back seeming to get worse before it gets better, there's plenty to get into.

Here are our winners and losers from qualifying for the Japanese Grand Prix.

Loser: Aston Martin (21st & 22nd)

Perhaps not unexpected but still embarrassing for the Honda-powered team to be rooted to the back of the grid for Honda's home grand prix.

The car is still painfully slow and, according to Fernando Alonso, was vibrating severely again on Saturday for no obvious reason, having appeared to improve in that aspect on Friday.

Alonso had almost three tenths on his team-mate Lance Stroll in Q1 but was over three tenths down on the slower of the two Cadillacs (Valtteri Bottas). To be behind that brand new team, and almost 1.6s down on the slowest of the more established cars (Ollie Bearman's Haas), is a woeful underachievement around a circuit that is also exposing the Aston Martin's lack of aerodynamic optimisation.

No wonder Alonso is finding zero satisfaction inside the cockpit right now, on top of the fact he feels driver skill is "not really needed anymore" in this battery-dominated formula.

I'd say he and Stroll are in for a long afternoon on Sunday, but that depends on whether they and the car can actually last the distance - which right now seems unlikely. - Ben Anderson

Loser: Max Verstappen (11th)

Yes, the Red Bull looks like midfield fodder again here at Suzuka. But that only serves to underscore how galling a rare, intra-team qualifying defeat like this is for Verstappen when the margins are so thin.

Verstappen's final Q2 lap itself was no easy watch. The exit of Degner 2 looked scruffy, and his run through Spoon just got worse and worse as the corner went on: big snap, drift wide, correct again and bam, that's all of the momentum sapped out of the run to 130R and the chicane.

And while his appearance in front of the TV cameras was neutral enough, his tone with the written media was one of deflation.

"I'm not even frustrated anymore," he said. "I'm beyond that, so that's a bit...I don't know the right word in English.

"I don't know what to make of it to be honest. Probably no words. I just cannot. I don’t get upset about it, I don't get disappointed, frustrated by it anymore with what's going on."

That was just one of many exasperated answers. The more there's talk of an early Verstappen exit from F1, the more it has to be taken seriously. - Jack Cozens

Winners: Arvid Lindblad & Isack Hadjar (10th & 8th)

An excellent performance and result from F1's least-experienced driver Lindblad, who is the one person approaching F1 2026 and its controversial power unit driving challenge with none of the baggage his peers carry around with them.

It's funny to hear Lindblad talking about giving it "full send" in Q2 while the likes of Charles Leclerc are bemoaning the fact that whenever they push hard they lose too much time on the straights for it to matter...

But anyway, another excellent display from Lindblad, who showed again how he can hit his marks quickly, on a tough track, despite a lack of practice. He is rapidly indicating Red Bull made the right call in promoting him.

Same for Hadjar, really, who outqualified his illustrious team-mate Verstappen in a car Hadjar described as "very hard to drive".

While Verstappen appears wrought with existential angst right now, and that is perhaps opening the door more than it should, Hadjar is nevertheless just head down through that opening, proving he belongs in the big team while trying to make the best of a bad situation. - BA

Loser: Ferrari (4th & 6th)

Neither Ferrari driver extracted the absolute maximum from the car in Q3, as Hamilton lost time to an unwelcome change of deployment strategy as a consequence of a snap, while Leclerc had a lairy moment that cost time on a lap that he was otherwise "very happy with".

But even so, Ferrari looked third-best at Suzuka.

"It's just we're not very quick," was Hamilton's summary, with both drivers complaining about time lost on the straights relative to the Mercedes-powered cars ahead.

Leclerc ended up fourth and Hamilton sixth, sandwiching the McLaren of Lando Norris but with Oscar Piastri well clear. The Ferrari remains strong off the line, so that should allow gains at the start, but its weaknesses, and McLaren's growing strengths, mean the battle for second best appears to have been turned on its head. - Edd Straw

Winner: Oscar Piastri (3rd)

McLaren has undoubtedly looked better at Suzuka, but even with its impressive Friday pace it still appeared to be the third-best team behind Mercedes and Ferrari throughout qualifying.

That was until Q3, when seemingly out of nowhere Piastri pulled out a stunning lap to find himself in front of both Ferraris and team-mate Norris. In the 24-year-old's traditionally laidback fashion, he simply mentioned how it was "nice to get in the top three" and for McLaren's execution to finally pay off.

McLaren still "clearly don't have the pace or grip" to challenge Kimi Antonelli and George Russell, in Piastri's words. However, Piastri will just be hoping that the car is finally on the same page as he is when trying to convert this result into a podium finish. - Eden Hannigan

Winner: Kimi Antonelli (1st)

Two laps good enough for pole and a weekend that has looked far more consistent than many of his scruffy efforts have before. It really feels like Antonelli is beginning to blossom as an F1 driver.

While his team-mate Russell struggled for a second event in a row with minor but impactful issues, Antonelli still had to execute and ward off the threat of a resurgent McLaren - which looked a real pole threat in practice - and perennial 2026 rival Ferrari, which ultimately could have been a lot closer than the times show.

Sunday is a big race for Antonelli. Win that and he starts to put pressure on the narrative that Russell wrapped up this championship before the season started, and instead ask the question of whether there is a real fight on for who emerges as Mercedes' star of the season. - Jack Benyon

Loser: Nico Hulkenberg (13th)

As Hulkenberg himself put it, a "cheeky little lock up" was the unfortunate difference between a spot in Q3 and his actual grid position of 13th.

Audi has looked to have speed all weekend, contending and often leading the midfield. In the hands of Gabriel Bortoleto, the team will line up ninth for Sunday's race and Hulkenberg himself believed the "flowy and more high-speed nature" of Suzuka suits the current car as he showed well throughout the early stages of qualifying.

In fact, he looked like a shoo-in for the top 10. But when it counted, he just couldn't put the lap together and suffered a premature exit.

Hulkenberg admitted he was "annoyed that it wasn't clean enough", and will probably share further disappointment knowing what might have been from this qualifying session. - EH

Loser: Alex Albon (17th)

After hitting the dizzying heights of eighth place in FP2 on Friday, Albon was brought back down to earth with a bump in qualifying.

Because while Carlos Sainz snuck through into Q2, Albon's Q1 elimination brought with it a frustrated snap over the Williams team radio about the likely cause of his time loss to his team-mate: "I complain for three races in a row that there's something wrong. But I'm sure it's my driving style..."

Albon declined to expand on those comments to Sky Sports F1 or the written media post-session, but read between the lines and it's fairly clear this is about energy deployment with these quirky 2026 cars.

"Let's say the corners are good, but the corners can be good around here," said Albon, when The Race's Jon Noble probed him on the specifics of what was wrong. "I just listened to what Ollie [Bearman] was saying at the end of his interview, and it's very true: you can be quicker in every corner and you can finish the lap slower because obviously there's a penalty to be applied."

In any case, there's not much external competition for Williams right now and Albon has looked generally the faster of the two drivers this weekend, so to end up behind Sainz goes down as a loss. - JC

Loser: Ollie Bearman (18th)

Bearman was one of the in-form drivers of 2026 heading into Suzuka, but his qualifying unravelled quickly.

"In the first run I was simply slow with no real explanation, and then the team told me that that was an issue, I don't know exactly what, but just losing time on the straights basically," he explained, not really knowing if the issue was fully solved for his second run.

But a bigger issue was the slow first lap costing him and his car time to learn where to deploy for maximum performance. With laptimes faster in qualifying than in practice, that first flying lap in Q1 is crucial for that.

"With any of these issues you lose cumulatively, it's not that you can just miss a lap and go back and it's OK," he added.

Some would state Bearman's best performances have come in races this year anyway, but he has a lot to do from 18th on the grid. The upside is, he won't be going backwards - at least in terms of performance - with the Cadillacs and Aston Martins behind him. - JB

Winner: Pierre Gasly (7th)

This is a beginning to look more like it from Alpine and its lead driver.

It's clear Alpine made overnight progress at Suzuka but while the upper limit for Franco Colapinto was the lower reaches of Q2, Gasly had "a lot of faith in what the car could do" as he led the midfield in qualifying for a second weekend in a row.

There was a real optimism to Gasly's tone, post-qualifying: he spoke of an "aggressive", "punchy" set-up that he could live with while the car retains its high-speed understeer injury, and about how the car felt "even better" on high fuel.

And what's more, there might be more to come. While Gasly noted Alpine is further off McLaren here than it was at Shanghai, "they're also world champion last year and we were last in the championship".

"I think overall, it's definitely a good progress and hopefully we can close that gap in the coming months," he said.

For now, this was a proper lap from a driver who's extracting the most from what he's got underneath him. - JC