Winners and losers from 2025 Hungarian Grand Prix qualifying

Qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix was the tale of two dramatically different Ferraris; while Charles Leclerc snatched a stunning pole position, Lewis Hamilton failed to make it into Q3.

These are PlanetF1.com’s winners and losers for the all-important qualifying session at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Winners and losers from 2025 Hungarian Grand Prix qualifying

Winner: Charles Leclerc

Charles Leclerc was positively jubilant when his Ferrari team informed him that he’d snatched pole position at the Hungarian Grand Prix, crying, “What?! Mamma mia!”

The Monegasque driver has never gotten along with the Hungaroring, with fourth-place finishes being the best he could muster in both 2019 and 2024 — but that could very well change now that Leclerc has snagged the “most unexpected pole position” of his career.

His success here shouldn’t be understated. Track conditions dramatically changed between Q2 and Q3, and those conditions grew worse throughout the duration of Q3. The McLaren duo lost half a second between sessions, and both failed to better their first flying lap in Q3.

But Leclerc was a marvel. He was the only driver to improve his lap time in Q3 when compared to Q2, and he was simply untouchable up at the very top of the timing sheets. Race day may bring changing fortunes as wet weather looms, but as Leclerc noted in the post-quali press conference, he’s done himself a huge favor starting from pole at a track where passing is so difficult.

Loser: Lewis Hamilton

“It’s just me every time,” Lewis Hamilton lamented to Sky Sports after being knocked out of qualifying in Q2. “I’m useless, absolutely useless.

“Team has no problem, you’ve seen the car’s on pole. They probably need to change driver.”

We’ve said it nearly every weekend so far in 2025, but the seven-time World Champion’s move to Ferrari has not gone to plan. Ride height concerns with the SF-25 made the car a handful to deal with, and Hamilton has found it challenging to juggle those issues on top of the procedural changes that are sure to accompany a team swap.

While Leclerc dislikes Hungary, Hamilton has historically thrived here, with eight victories and pole position in 2023 — the most recent pole of his career. Yet again, he’s fallen short of expectations, and he’ll have a challenging fight to the points on Sunday afternoon.

Winner: Aston Martin

Aston Martin’s rollercoaster ride of performance has hit another crescendo in Hungary, with Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll lining up fifth and sixth on the starting grid, respectively.

First and foremost, we have to give kudos to Alonso. The 44-year-old driver sustained a minor back muscle injury after the Belgian Grand Prix, and he skipped out on FP1 in an effort to avoid further irritating the problem. But rather than take it easy on the track, Alonso seems to have used the setback as a springboard into a strong weekend.

And just behind him was teammate Stroll. The Canadian driver has shown flashes of brilliance throughout his career, but those moments are often few and far between — and Hungary has been one of them.

Aston Martin are in the thick of a tense midfield points battle, with a mere 23 points separating P6 in the constructors’ standings from P10. The British team will be hoping to use this qualifying as a way to leap further up the standings from its current eighth-place position, as they’ll be starting ahead of all the competition: Racing Bulls, Haas, Sauber, and Alpine.

Loser: Red Bull Racing

Max Verstappen wouldn’t call the 2025 Hungarian Grand Prix his worst race weekend in years — not when he has some “Singapore disasters” under his belt — but it’s hard to imagine a worse outcome for the driver.

Speaking to media after a disappointing qualifying left him eighth on the starting grid, Verstappen stated that every corner of every lap on this track has been a challenge this weekend, with the car battling a complete lack of grip, both front and rear. Meanwhile, Yuki Tsunoda will start 16th.

While eighth isn’t a terrible starting position, Verstappen and the Red Bull camp are earning a slot on this weekend’s losers list for one primary reason: The car isn’t getting better.

According to Verstappen, trying to implement updates has the team feeling like it’s going in circles. The car isn’t behaving in a way that makes sense, which therefore makes it almost impossible to commit to a developmental direction. It’s a frustrating problem, and one that’s sure to get worse as the season goes on.

More analysis from the Hungarian Grand Prix:

? Revealed: The new parts added to Red Bull’s attacking arsenal

? Chief McLaren threat steps forward with Hungarian GP data uncovered

Winner: Gabriel Bortoleto

Since Sauber introduced a new floor in Spain, rookie Gabriel Bortoleto has been on a tear — one that sees him start from a career-best seventh come Sunday afternoon.

While the start of the F1 2025 season wasn’t easy for the Brazilian driver, Bortoleto has rapidly come into his own, displaying all the natural talent that saw him win championships in both Formula 3 and Formula 2 in his rookie year. In Hungary, he was the dominant of Sauber’s drivers, with teammate Nico Hulkenberg lining up 19th on the grid just two races after securing his first-ever podium.

At a track where overtaking can be tricky, Bortoleto has done everything he needs to do to prepare himself for snagging points on Sunday.

Loser: Esteban Ocon

In perhaps the strangest moment of qualifying, Haas driver Esteban Ocon ran over a screw as he tried to exit the pit lane for his second flying lap in Q1.

The crew did not seem to puncture his right-front tyre; rather, it was mostly just stuck there as the Frenchman exited the pit lane. It seems that he was able to remove the screw from the rubber before going on to set a flying lap, but it was a lap that was very clearly compromised.

Would Ocon have been able to set a quicker lap without the screw fiasco? It’s entirely possible; teammate Oliver Bearman moved on to Q2 and narrowly missed out on progressing to Q3. Instead, Ocon will line up 18th on the grid.

Winner: McLaren

No, McLaren didn’t snag pole position, nor did it lock out the front row of the grid. But Q3 is perhaps the weakest the papaya team has been in 2025 — and it still managed to snag the second and third starting positions.

All weekend long, McLaren has found a dominant edge on the rest of the field, to the tune of around half a second when compared to the next-closest driver, Charles Leclerc. But a sudden change in conditions heading into Q3 completely flipped the script.

Track temperatures dropped and gusts of wind grew stronger and changed direction as a storm system neared the Hungaroring just before the start of Q3. Every single driver — with the exception of Charles Leclerc — went slower in Q3 than in Q2. The McLarens both lost around half a second in raw pace.

And yet they’re still second and third.

That, in and of itself, is a testament to the absolute dominant nature of the MCL39. The rest of the field is scrapping for hundredths of a second; meanwhile, McLaren can lose half a second of pace and still outperform 17 other drivers. That’s worthy of a win in my book.

Loser: Alex Albon

While both Williams drivers admitted on Friday evening that they’d gone in perhaps the wrong developmental direction, Alex Albon was far less concerned about the team’s performance than Carlos Sainz. As the Spaniard worried that “we made ourselves slow,” Albon stated that the team’s performance was “not the end of the world” because he’d performed well in FP1.

But in qualifying, he was knocked out in the first session and will start dead last. Sainz himself will only like up 13th, but for a team desperate to maintain its fifth-place in the championship, Williams is going to have a long road ahead of it if it wants to get both cars in the points — particularly Albon.

Read next: Charles Leclerc qualifying secret revealed after surprise Hungarian pole