Winners and losers from the 2026 Austrian Grand Prix including Max Verstappen and Ferrari

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The 2026 Formula 1 Austrian Grand Prix added plenty of spice to the hotly contested drivers’ championship with George Russell taking his first victory since the season opener in Australia.

The victory saw him overtake Lewis Hamilton for second in the World Championship standings and chip away at some of the gap separating him from his teammate Kimi Antonelli. It’s exactly the kind of momentum the Briton could hope for heading into his home race.

But if Russell was a winner, what does that make Antonelli? And where does the rest of the field stack up in this weekend’s edition of winners and losers?

Winner: George Russell

While Friday practice was firmly in his teammate’s hands, George Russell emerged at the top of the timing charts come FP3 and never wavered. In fact, his final flying lap in qualifying, where he lifted off the throttle in order to avoid Max Verstappen’s wreck, was still quick enough to knock Charles Leclerc out of pole position. Yet to balance that last-lap assurance is the fact that Russell needed to be instructed to “just drive” earlier in the session.

It was by no means a controlled or dominant performance; Russell could have fallen victim to a rapidly improving Red Bull had the rival team opted for a different strategy. It was, however, exactly the kind of performance the Briton needed to remind himself (and the world) of his skill.

Russell crossed the finish line in first to secure 25 much-needed points; he moved up the championship standings from third to second and carved down the existing gap between himself and teammate Kimi Antonelli by 10 points. It was a best-case-scenario event for a driver who needed the confidence.

Loser: Ferrari

After Lewis Hamilton’s first win in red last time out in Barcelona and the Ferrari duo’s second-and-third-place starts on the Austrian GP grid, you’d have been forgiven for expecting big things from the Scuderia come race day. Yet Leclerc’s second-place start ended in an eighth-place finish, while Hamilton’s third place became a fifth.

If Ferrari absolutely nailed their Barcelona strategy, they did the opposite in Austria. The team took advantage of a virtual safety car to pit Hamilton, perhaps unnecessarily, and were so bereft of unique calls at the end of the race that even a pit stop couldn’t have made a difference for Charles Leclerc.

It’s a tough break for a team that brought a major engine upgrade this weekend. Hamilton finished over 26 seconds behind the winner, and Charles Leclerc was 19 more seconds behind him. It wasn’t quite ‘worst-case scenario’, but it certainly wasn’t good.

What went wrong for Ferrari at the Austrian Grand Prix?

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Winner: Max Verstappen

Max Verstappen crossed the finish line at the Austrian Grand Prix, just 1.6 seconds in arrears of the winner. And had Red Bull nailed their strategy, that deficit could have easily turned into a winning margin for the four-time champion.

As it was, Verstappen’s impressive second-place finish places him firmly in the ‘winner’ class this weekend.

Part of that, of course, comes down to Red Bull Racing itself. The team brought their first major upgrade package of the season here in Austria, and it allowed them to trim the gap that’s been building between them and already-upgraded machines from Mercedes and Ferrari.

But a significant part of that success has to come down to Verstappen himself. Despite a late crash in qualifying, the Dutch driver rallied to knock out his best finish of the year at his team’s home track. All he needed was a little confidence in his car.

Loser: Kimi Antonelli

After five consecutive victories, championship leader Kimi Antonelli has begun to appear mortal after all. His dominance over the top of the timing charts in Friday practice never exactly disappeared, because the Italian racer set the fastest lap of the race. But his speed failed to translate into a result better than third.

It was a messy race right from the start. Antonelli ran wide three times during the first two laps and suffered from a brake imbalance for much of the event; because of that, he’d fallen down to fifth on the track before the first pit stop and needed to fight hard for every position ahead of him rather than fighting for the win.

Antonelli should feel good about the way he closed in on Max Verstappen in the closing moments of the race, but his failure to secure a better finishing position will certainly sting when he looks at the championship standings.

Winner: Racing Bulls

Now that the field has come to grips with the 2026 regulatory changes, we’ve seen a cementing of the running order into three distinct groups: the frontrunners, the midfielders, and the back markers. And leading the charge in the midfield group in Austria was none other than Racing Bulls, who secured their third straight double-points finish.

Racing Bulls aren’t leading the midfielders in the constructors’ championship just yet: they’re currently down in sixth with 44 points to Alpine’s 57. Yet it’s clear that the team has been finding its footing. If they can translate their Austrian Grand Prix performance into season-long consistency, they’ll easily claim the honour of being king of the midfield.

Loser: Cadillac

Cadillac didn’t even make it 20 miles into the race before both cars had pulled into the pits to retire with issues that had plagued them since Friday.

Sergio Perez called the weekend “very frustrating” and pointed out that “we cannot have these sorts of issues”. Valtteri Bottas added that it was a “shame” to have another “difficult weekend.”

Cadillac were one of the teams that brought a major upgrade package to the Austrian Grand Prix, yet the new American outfit simply didn’t get enough laps under their belts to gather any data. They’ll have another opportunity to test those upgrades at Silverstone, but with six retirements in eight races, there’s no guarantee they’ll complete a full race.