Key events
Antonelli fastest, then Russell takes it by 0.319! Norris third, Piastri fourth.
Antonelli, then Russell, then Norris powering through.
Norris resting. A gamble. We saw him pull it off on occasion last year, before he gained that world-champion serenity.
Hamilton on older tyres can only run sixth. Not a good day for either Ferrari.
Antonelli can’t beat the times set by Piastri and Verstappen, but Russell can.
Antonelli is the first man to go for a flying lap, on “half-used tyres” Brundle says, in light of the interruption.
And we are go for (I hope) the last time today.
Q3 will resume in a couple of minutes.
Brundle suspects driver error, but is not ruling out a power surge. Ferrari will be worried about the state of the car; remember in 2021 that Leclerc took pole in Monaco but a late crash meant he couldn’t race on the Sunday.
Hamilton ready to go, Leclerc’s side of the garage stunned.
That is a Ferrari out of qualifying. Piastri ran a 1:15.175, ahead of Verstappen by 0.152, and those are the only two with a time. There’s eight and a half minutes left when Q3 resumes.
A week after going out of his home grand prix, the Monegasque has hit the wall. “A huge impact,” says Brundle.
Leclerc crashes! Red flag!
OK, so Q3 is getting started, slowly. About a third of the session passed without interest.
Lance Stroll has been talking in the pit lane:
How was that?
Not so good.”
Anything tomorrow?
“No, we need to wait for the upgrade package.”
Holding pattern?
“Pretty much.”
How is that as a driver?
“It is what it is, that’s how it goes.”
First race outqualifying Fernando, mean anything?
“No. I don’t care.”
Mean more if you guys were at the front?
“I don’t know. I don’t give a shit.”
That give me an idea for an F1 play: Waiting For the Upgrade Package, by Samuel Becketts Corner.
F1? Pfft. Endurance driving is where it’s at for Giles this weekend.
Giles Richards, our F1 correspondent, is off this weekend on his annual pilgrimage to Le Mans, so Luke McLaughlin is our man in Barcelona. Luke checks in from the circuit:
Yesterday a weekend preview piece was planned on Kimi Antonelli: several drivers spoke interestingly about him during the media day on Thursday, including Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc; all were generous in their praise. Then, at a Pirelli book launch on Friday, the former driver Nick Heidfeld praised the Mercedes team principal, Toto Wolff, for his patience in nurturing the 19-year-old Italian. “If you look back last year, he was not always winning, not always as strong as he is now,” Heidfeld said. “But Toto gave him the space to grow and always protected him. He is paying that back now.”
However, once news emerged of Alpine’s successful appeal against the Monaco pit-lane speeding penalties, the Antonelli idea went in the bin and it was all about the potential implications and possible counter-appeals following Pierre Gasly’s reinstatement to the Monaco podium. I arrived at the pleasantly hot track today wondering if that would again dominate the agenda, but all seems quiet for now, and with McLaren and Ferrari both looking highly competitive against Mercedes the stage is set for a fascinating conclusion to qualifying before the race tomorrow. Then again it seems that predicting anything in Formula One is unwise at best.
Q2 exits
Out go Lindblad, Bortoleto, Colapinto, Gasly, Bearman and Sainz.
Hulkenberg, for now, sneaks into the top 10.
Piastri can only make sixth, and that is seventh when Norris comes through in fourth. That’s better for the world champion.
Once again the top men are staying in their hutches, five of the big seven, but the McLarens have had to go out.
What will the heavily fancied McLarens do? Norris was fastest in FP2 and Piastri second in FP3.
Bortoleto, Colapinto, Bearman, Gasly, Sainz and Hulkenberg in the drop zone. The Hulk broke track limits so has no time.
Russell goes fastest but McLaren are struggling, Norris eighth and Piastri 10th.
Verstappen goes fastest, then Hadjar, till Leclerc strikes, with Antonelli a fraction behind.
Everyone out now, hoping for a gap in the traffic.
Here comes Piastri, who Benjamin points out was on pole last year.
It should be noted than Nico Hülkenberg managed to go fifth fastest but Piastri, Norris and Verstappen were resting. Q2 has officially started but no one is out there.
A downcast Williams’s James Vowles admits his team are struggling, while praising the drivers Albon and Sainz. “Not done a good enough job,” is his verdict. For Aston Martin, Alonso and Stroll are almost a second behind the Cadillacs of Bottas and Perez.
Q1 exits
Out go Ocon, Albon, Perez, Bottas, Stroll and Alonso. Not good for Fernando, being outqualified by his teammate Stroll. But he is still the man.
Top 11 staying in the pits. Alonso in the zone, Sainz too now.
Brundle points out that when Alonso is talking about this being his Barcelona farewell, that F1 is not back here till 2028, alternating with Madrid after this season.
The bottom six are Pérez, Ocon, Bottas, Albon, Alonso and Stroll.
No one is on track. This is what it’s all about.
The big seven – 2 x Merc, 2 x Mc, 2 x Ferrari, and Verstappen – are in the top seven places.
Quickly cancelled, seems to have been Albon and Stroll going off the track and the latter losing a lot of speed in the gravel.
Piastri and Norris only fifth and sixth. Yellow flag …
Hamilton had been complaining about a lack of power but the Monaco runner-up didn’t seem to be troubled.
That doesn’t last long, Charles Leclerc goes fastest, then Russell, then Hamilton.
Verstappen sets the first real marker in the low 1:16s.
Here they all come, bar McLaren.
Here comes Antonelli. The first of the big guns to come out of his garage seems to be the championship leader.
Carlos Sainz going fastest in low 1.18s. Only seven drivers out.
And we are go. Valtteri Bottas leads the way.
Harry Benjamin is in the Sky commentary seat, with Martin Brundle alongside him. Any Harry in the hot seat brings to mind the immortal Frank Bough line: “Your Carpenter is Harry Commentator.”
Qualifying is less than 10 minutes away. Is it Mercedes v McLaren? Can Russell put his frustrations behind him? He probably feels he has nothing to lose now.
While the rest of the pit lane is up in arms over timing, Antonelli’s brow has been furrowed by a towel:
Kimi Antonelli’s quest to recover a winner’s towel swiped by Kim Kardashian at the Monaco Grand Prix is over after the Mercedes driver received a replacement from Lewis Hamilton’s celebrity friend.
Mercedes posted a video on Instagram of the 19-year-old Italian asking for his towel in the team garage, after practice for the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix. He was then handed one with “To Kimi from Kim” embroidered on it.
’Thank you Kim,” he said, putting it around his neck. The missing towel had become a social media video gag, with Antonelli repeatedly asking about its whereabouts.
Television images from after Sunday’s race in Monaco had appeared to show Kardashian, accompanying Ferrari driver Hamilton, picking the folded item off the number one marker and wiping her face and sunglasses before walking away with it. Reuters
Incidentally, a big up to the Guardian style guide entry on swearing, which allowed us to publish Gasly’s full fury last Sunday, as his profanity was “absolutely necessary to the facts of a piece, or to portray a character in an article”. I imagine the expletives also flew as each person in the F1 food chain realised they had some bad news to relay to the next member up the hierarchy.
Not everyone is happy. Martin Brundle was concerned, after listening to Gasly’s interview, about the can of worms the FIA had opened. And Red Bull’s Laurent Mekies, whose Isack Hadjar has now been bumped down from third, told Sky: “I think we are a bit confused, not so much because you win the podium or lose the podium, because at the end of the day we are talking about non-appealable penalties, and you are racing around cars that are receiving non-appealable penalties. You adapt your racing also, and some cars actually served their penalties there. I think regardless of what we think as teams, and we defend our competitive positions, it’s very important for the fans that we get, moving forward, the right clarity about the race result at the time that the race is finishing.”
Back to the controv. Gasly told Sky’s Ted Kravitz today: “I’m extremely happy for the whole team, very proud of the whole team, the way they have fought for all of us for that result. Sunday night I felt very low … The team did an amazing job. I’m proud of everyone, the FIA for the transparency and for recognising their responsibilities.” But while he got the points and place back, he was denied the chance to stand on the Monte Carlo podium with Prince Albert: “It won’t give me back what I missed … We’ll have to do it another time.”
What’s happened on the track so far this weekend? Well, the good news for Russell was that he was fastest in first practice, but Antonelli had his feet up as this was a chance for rookies to get a go in one of a team’s cars. In second practice, Lando Norris pipped Russell, with Antonelli in fifth but unbothered as it was his first time out.
In this morning’s third practice, it was back to a Mercedes being quickest, and this time it was … George Russell:
George Russell built confidence for the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix by topping the timesheets in the final practice session. The Mercedes driver has endured some difficult weeks but has led the way in two of the three practice sessions at Montmeló.
McLaren’s Oscar Piastri followed, two tenths of a second behind, with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc third and the 2025 champion, Lando Norris, fourth in the other McLaren.
Lewis Hamilton was fifth but seven tenths down on Russell, ahead of Max Verstappen in sixth and the championship leader, Kimi Antonelli.
Antonelli, seeking a sixth straight Grand Prix triumph on Sunday, was left frustrated by traffic. The 19-year-old Italian’s first qualification simulation lap was spoiled by the slow-moving Lance Stroll, and on his second there were several cars blocking his way. “Why do I always get traffic? I don’t understand,” he complained over team radio.
Home fans were happy to see Fernando Alonso, cheering him on from the grandstand named after the two-time world champion, before what he says is probably his last race at Montmeló. Reuters
And here are the constructors’:
1. Mercedes 244pts
2. Ferrari 165pts
3. McLaren 116pts
4. Red Bull 69pts
5. Alpine 50pts
6. Racing Bulls 35pts
7. Haas 21pts
8. Williams 11pts
9. Audi 2pts
10. Aston Martin 1pt
11. Cadillac 0pts
We are half an hour from the off of qualifying for the snappily named Formula 1 MSC Cruises Gran Premio de Barcelona-Catalunya 2026. The Spanish Grand Prix – on the streets of Madrid – is scheduled for 13 September
Here are the lawyered standings, with Gasly still in eighth but much closer to Max Verstappen:
1. Kimi Antonelli (IT) Mercedes 156 points
2. Lewis Hamilton (GB) Ferrari 90pts
3. George Russell (GB) Mercedes 88pts
4. Charles Leclerc (Mon) Ferrari 75pts
5. Oscar Piastri (Aus) McLaren 58pts
6. Lando Norris (GB) McLaren 58pts
7. Max Verstappen (Neth) Red Bull 43pts
8. Pierre Gasly (Fr) Alpine 35pts
9. Isack Hadjar (Fr) Red Bull 26pts
10. Liam Lawson (NZ) Racing Bulls 24pts
11. Oliver Bearman (GB) Haas 18pts
12. Franco Colapinto (Arg) Alpine 15pts
13. Arvid Lindblad (GB) Racing Bulls 11pts
14. Carlos Sainz (Sp) Williams 6pts
15. Alexander Albon (Tha) Williams 5pts
16. Esteban Ocon (Fr) Haas 3pts
17. Gabriel Bortoleto (Br) Audi 2pts
18. Fernando Alonso (Sp) Aston Martin 1pt
19. Nico Hülkenberg (Ger) Audi 0pts
20. Valtteri Bottas (Fin) Cadillac 0pts
21. Sergio Pérez (Mex) Cadillac 0pts
22. Lance Stroll (Can) Aston Martin 0pts
Preamble
Just when George Russell thought his luck could not get any worse …
Formula One and the FIA would like you to remember the 2026 Monaco Grand Prix for Kimi Antonelli’s fifth straight race win. That was a stunning achievement and one unsullied by what was going on around Mercedes’s young Italian. Lewis Hamilton came in second and no one can argue that the Ferrari driver did not deserve it. Everything else, however …
The string of penalties for pit-lane speeding seemed at first blush to suggest large-scale blundering by the teams; Alpine’s successful appeal against Pierre Gasly’s demotion from third to seventh, granted on Friday, exposed that Formula One itself had been at fault, leaving everyone unhappy except the lawyers. In short, they were measuring the wrong distance, and a swath of drivers – including Hamilton, but to no great detriment – were all deemed, wrongly, to have broken the speed limit by less than 0.1km/h.
No one will be seething more than Russell, whose Mercedes team compounded F1’s error by failing to have him serve his five-second penalty when he pitted again. This meant he then had to do a drive-through, costing him far more than five seconds and leaving him out of the points and now 68 behind his youthful teammate in the championship standings, and two points behind Hamilton.
None of the other teams whose drivers were penalised appealed, and so the current line from the authorities is that they have lost their right to do so because of the FIA’s statute of limitations on race matters. But … lawyers. And those who benefited from Gasly’s demotion are also unhappy at his reinstatement, with Isack Hadjar and Red Bull lodging an intent to appeal against his loss of a podium finish and McLaren doing likewise over Oscar Piastri, who served his five seconds, dropping from fourth to fifth. The teams had 96 hours to turn the lodging of an intent into an actual appeal, so that means we’ll know more by Tuesday at the latest.
Remember, this was the week when (some sort of) peace was supposed to have broken out. Modifications to the balance between petrol and battery for future seasons were agreed, to appease the critics led by Max Verstappen of this year’s regulations, which prevent drivers going flat-out and contributed to Oliver Bearman’s awful crash in Miami.
So that is the backdrop for today’s qualifying session in Barcelona, one that will take place simultaneously in bright sunshine and under a dark cloud.
Join me from 2.30pm for the buildup and 3pm for Q1, and send your thoughts on the racing and the lawyering to philip.cornwall@theguardian.com
