The first non-Mercedes works team pole of the season, a proper improvement from Aston Martin upsetting its rivals and a very angry Max Verstappen.

That hasn't even begun to scratch the surface of the depth of storylines our winners and losers from Hungaroring qualifying delves into today...

Winner: Fernando Alonso and Aston Martin (16th)

OK, it used three sets of tyres, and OK, the circuit was always likely to suit the power-unit-troubled car, but however you cut this, a first Q2 of the year when Aston Martin was as much as two seconds off its closest rivals as recently as the previous race is a massive, massive win.

And to counter the provisos above, it did it having lost a lot of time and parts with Lance Stroll’s truncated practice yesterday. Luckily Alonso was there to strike at the crucial moment in Q1.

The team knows there’s a long way to go, but the misery of its competitors shows Aston is considered a real threat to the likes of Haas and Williams - both of which it beat today - as well as Cadillac.

Perhaps its biggest win, reckons Alonso, is that it is no longer chasing something it “doesn’t know”, because “we know exactly what we are looking for” in the short, medium and long term. - Jack Benyon

Winner - Lando Norris (1st)

“It wasn't my finest,” said Norris as, with some superficial modesty, he unpacked just how difficult the lap was to execute on a newly-resurfaced and intractable Hungaroring.

The reigning champion is surely elated with his first pole position of 2026, particularly given the aforementioned factors which caught out Verstappen and Isack Hadjar among others.

Norris then admitted he was confident of McLaren’s pace - the team having delivered the first tranche of its major upgrade package to Hungary - throughout the weekend.

He explained that, after Friday practice, the team “pretty much changed nothing” for Saturday despite suffering compared to Ferrari in sectors two and three.

The change in wind direction “limited our losses”, he added. That could go some way to explaining why he was top in FP3 before taking pole position.

On a Saturday where Mercedes faltered and Ferrari let an opportunity to take pole slip, Norris emerged to capitalise. - Samarth Kanal

Loser: Mercedes (3rd & 7th)

This was Mercedes’ worst qualifying result of the season so far, and the first time neither Kimi Antonelli nor George Russell has taken pole in 2026. It may get even worse if Antonelli is penalised for a yellow flag infringement at the end of Q3.

Russell was a lowly seventh, 0.553s off pole, and will need a new engine for the race after suffering a water leak in Q3 that was “spraying water over my tyres”. Even with a clean session, though, he felt pole was beyond Mercedes here.

Antonelli concurred, saying Mercedes is now maybe suffering for lack of significant aero upgrades compared to Ferrari and McLaren, which have both brought updated rear wings to this race and, in McLaren’s case, what looks to be a powerful new floor.

“Already in the warm-up [lap] we were going over the peak of the tyres, so already from Turn 1 you could feel the grip was not there,” Antonelli said, “and there was a lot of four-wheel sliding, especially in the last sector, just really no traction.”

The bright spot is that both drivers feel the car’s race pace is far stronger, so if overtaking is possible here they’ll be looking to progress towards the podium.

“Our assessment after FP2 yesterday was we were seven tenths off in qually pace and we had the quickest race pace,” Russell said. “So that tells you it's not a car problem, it's a tyre problem.

“And I guess we'll answer the question tomorrow if we've struck the right balance between the tyre heating for qually versus the race.” - Ben Anderson

Loser - Lewis Hamilton (5th)

Another qualifying session that got away from Ferrari and this one was all the more painful for the Scuderia, given Mercedes was out of the fight.

Hamilton lamented his team’s choice to deploy his car so early, while McLaren was the last team to send its cars out, for that final Q3 run.

He didn’t improve on his last Q3 run with a snap of oversteer in Turn 1 and a pretty messy run thereafter, leaving Hamilton 0.012s slower than polesitter Norris.

After the session, the seven-time champion then picked up a three-place grid penalty for impeding Oscar Piastri.

Hamilton told stewards that he didn’t receive a radio message to alert him until Piastri arrived, and Piastri was not visible in his mirrors.

Yet, the stewards found that the Ferrari driver had forced Piastri to take “avoiding action by running wide and being obliged to abort the lap”. - SK

Loser: Max Verstappen (6th)

Both Verstappen and team-mate Isack Hadjar had spins during qualifying, and Verstappen lamented what he felt was an actual physical "degradation" of his RB22, triggering a loss of aero load.

It will be interesting to know whether he means components reacting badly to temperature, or actual wear-and-tear, or something else, and what Red Bull's data shows. But even at its peaks the RB22 has been pretty unremarkable this weekend, in his or Hadjar's hands.

The fastest Red Bull was 0.484s off in FP1, 0.692s off in FP2, 0.717s off in FP3, 0.379s off in Q1, 0.416s off in Q2 and 0.518s off in Q3.

As far as the Hungaroring goes, it is an unremarkable car here - and unlikely to give Verstappen many opportunities on Sunday, in what continues to feel like a particularly long season on his end. - Valentin Khorounzhiy

Winner: Esteban Ocon (15th)

Esteban Ocon’s been having what he described on Thursday as the “most difficult first half of the season that I've ever had”, struggling with parts inconsistencies that have hurt both Haas drivers at different points this year.

Prior to Hungary, Ocon felt like he’s only had “normal car performance” at Japan and Silverstone this year, so he had hopes a switch to a different rear wing, floor and engine (from Saturday) in the pool for Hungary would help.

The early signs were good on Friday, but Ocon was cautious that a good Friday hasn’t always translated into a strong Saturday.

However, it did translate as Ocon outqualified Ollie Bearman for the first time since Monaco, outpacing him by 0.223s in Q1 and then pipping Alonso to 15th in Q2 - the limit of what the Haas VF-26 looks capable of at the Hungaroring.

“We put the car down in FP1, we didn't have to cycle through any parts. It was working straight away, didn't seem to have any straightline speed issues,” Ocon said.

“We recovered the rear downforce loss that we had from Spa, and the imbalance with too much front downforce that we had there.

“Everything was working normally from delta to map, and we could build from there. Just fine-tune here and there, get the set-up ready.” - Josh Suttill

Loser: Ollie Bearman (17th)

“Really painful,” was Bearman’s response to having to fight Aston Martins, and it was a rare defeat to his team-mate Ocon as well as a Q1 exit for Bearman to boot.

Given he was fifth in the championship after the first two races and has been in Q3 this year, it’s easy to see why Bearman is frustrated with Haas’s current situation.

But despite all of that, he’s still been beaten by the one person you have to beat when the team is struggling: your team-mate. - JB

Loser - Williams (18th and 19th)

Williams’s weekend has worsened with Alonso putting the B-spec Aston Martin into Q2.

Carlos Sainz (P18) said Hungary could prove to be the “worst one of the season” given the balance issues and lack of downforce.

To add to the Spaniard’s woes, he’s been grappling with a gearbox issue - that the team hasn’t been able to solve yet - making the car “unpredictable”.

No two laps felt the same, he said, as he pointed to Aston Martin’s upgrade and asked why his team wasn’t “doing the same”. He added that he’s not convinced that his team can match the Silverstone team’s rate of development.

Alex Albon said that his car had become “a different machine” overnight as he underlined the chaotic nature of Williams’s issues, echoing team-mate Sainz in saying that Williams “could only dream” of an Aston Martin-style upgrade.

The pair wait anxiously for the upgrade to land in Azerbaijan, while weathering the storm in Hungary. - SK

Loser: Liam Lawson (11th)

Liam Lawson reckoned he “just drove really badly in Q2” which gave his rookie team-mate Arvid Lindblad the chance to outshine him.

It’s Lawson’s first race with the new Racing Bulls upgrade, but clearly he wasn’t able to extract the maximum out of it - suffering understeer in sector one and oversteer in sector three, according to his team.

It means a fast start will be necessary to get up to the fight for the lead of the midfield between Lindblad and Nico Hulkenberg ahead.

While the race and sprint head-to-head remains strongly in Lawson’s favour, Lindblad has closed the gap to 6-5 in grand prix qualifying, still in Lawson’s favour, but mighty close. - JB

Loser - Gabriel Bortoleto (14th)

Bortoleto’s qualifying began on the wrong foot as he had a lap chalked off for track limits at Turn 4. His second attempt was a safe one - and he achieved what he said was essentially the bare minimum in getting to Q2.

He said that the weekend has unravelled from FP2 onwards with a loss of confidence and feeling in the car.

Worse is the gap to Hulkenberg, who managed to qualify 10th, having been half a second faster than Bortoleto in Q2 alone, where the Brazilian had “no grip” and went wide twice at Turn 4.

The veteran Hulkenberg is in contention for his first point of 2026: consolation to him and Audi, but little comfort to Bortoleto. - SK