Qualifying Report & Results 2025 Qatar F1 Grand Prix

Event: Qatar F1 Grand Prix
Track: Losail International Circuit

Weather: dry 20°C
Tarmac: dry 25°C
Humidity : 75%
Wind: 1.0 km/h North

Oscar Piastri qualified as quickest for the 6th time in his F1 career and scored pole position for Sunday's fourth  Qatar Grand Prix. The Australian driver will start from P1 for the first time in Qatar. It's his 6th pole this season. It was the 177th pole for the McLaren F1 team.

2025 Qatar GP Qualifying: Piastri Lands Double Pole As McLaren Crush Lusail

Championship pressure under the Lusail floodlights

If Oscar Piastri came to Qatar needing a lifeline for his title hopes, he’s just thrown himself the biggest one he could find.
The Australian backed up his Sprint pole and Sprint victory with another immaculate qualifying performance, snatching Grand Prix pole from team mate Lando Norris and stamping McLaren’s authority all over Lusail.

Norris still holds the cards in the Championship – 22 points clear of Piastri and 25 ahead of Max Verstappen – but tonight was a reminder that we are absolutely not done yet.
If Norris wins tomorrow, he’s World Champion. Piastri has already called it “win or bust”. Verstappen, meanwhile, has to beat Norris just to keep his own hopes mathematically alive.

On raw pace though? The papaya cars looked like they were in their own private category.

Q1 – Hamilton and Ferrari sink again as Lusail bites

Full night race, high grip, soft tyres all round – and chaos in the pit lane before a timed lap was even set.
As the green light came on for Q1, half the field decided that the best place to test their brakes was inside the fast lane. Alex Albon muscled his way ahead of Esteban Ocon in the queue, leaving the Alpine driver fuming and the stewards noting a “pit lane incident involving car 23” for after the session.

Once they finally got going, everyone headed out on soft tyres, some gambling on used sets to save fresh rubber for later. Early doors, the track evolution was huge: Fernando Alonso briefly went quickest, Isack Hadjar and Pierre Gasly suddenly found themselves 1–2, and the times were dropping by the second as more rubber went down after the Sprint and F2 running.

Ferrari’s nightmare weekend, however, stubbornly refused to wake up.
Charles Leclerc needed fresh tyres just to drag his Ferrari into the top 10, while Lewis Hamilton – already suffering through a miserable Qatar trip with Ferrari – never looked comfortable. Jolyon Palmer on F1TV summed it up neatly: the car looked better balanced than before, but the grip simply wasn’t there.

As the clock wound down, the usual Q1 roulette kicked in. Norris and Piastri were safely at the top once they finally uncorked a proper lap, with Piastri leading on a 1:20.739 on used tyres, Norris and Russell tucked in behind. But further back, it was carnage.

Tsunoda briefly climbed out of danger, only to be dragged straight back in as the track ramped up again. Lawson improved. Sainz hurled his Williams up to P6. Gasly joined the top 10 party. Kimi Antonelli banged in a strong lap to go P4.

There was no such rescue for Hamilton.

Running a second new set of softs, Ferrari threw what they had at it – and the seven-time champion stayed nailed to the bottom half of the timesheets. More drivers improved, and by the time the flag fell Hamilton had been shuffled all the way down to P18.

In the end, these five bowed out:

• 16th – Yuki Tsunoda

• 17th – Esteban Ocon

• 18th – Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari)

• 19th – Lance Stroll

• 20th – Franco Colapinto

Two P18 qualifying results in two days for Hamilton at Ferrari. Brutal.

Q2 – McLaren turn the screw, Leclerc walks the tightrope

Q2 began with Albon again leading a train out of the pit lane – the same Albon who’s under investigation for that earlier queue-jump. Everyone stuck with the softs, but tyre life and tyre stock were already becoming a story.

Some drivers bolted on fresh rubber. Others – including the Williams pair, Leclerc and both Saubers – had to gamble on used tyres. Gabriel Bortoleto headed out knowing he’d be taking a five-place grid penalty into Sunday, a hangover from Las Vegas.

Oliver Bearman laid down the first proper marker with a 1:20.438, Leclerc a few tenths adrift on older tyres. Then Verstappen appeared and calmly raised the bar with a 1:20.142 after a double warm-up lap, banking something solid for Red Bull after a grumpy Sprint day.

But as soon as the McLarens were unleashed, the tone of the session changed completely.

Piastri lit up the middle sector and rocketed to the top with a 1:19.650. Norris matched him in sector one but had his initial time deleted for track limits at Turn 10 – pushing too hard, too early, and paying for it. Russell, working his Mercedes through two prep laps, slotted into P3. Antonelli impressed again with a tidy first attempt.

The pressure meter, though, was firmly pinned over at Ferrari.

Leclerc found himself skirting the drop zone, while Norris – Championship leader, remember – sat there with no valid lap time at all. With about four minutes left, the timing screen made for unusual reading: Lawson, Albon, Bortoleto, Leclerc and Norris all in the danger zone.

McLaren didn’t blink. Norris was sent back out on a fresh set, and this time there were no excursions over the white lines. He delivered when it mattered, going second, two tenths down on Piastri but crucially safe.

Leclerc’s route was much more dramatic. Ferrari rolled the dice on a second new set of softs in Q2, giving him no margin at all for Q3. Right at the end, as Bearman and Lawson failed to haul themselves into safety and Russell saw one lap deleted but kept enough in hand, Leclerc clung on with a late push to grab P9.

Out went:

• 11th – Nico Hulkenberg

• 12th – Liam Lawson

• 13th – Ollie Bearman

• 14th – Gabriel Bortoleto (plus his 5-place penalty)

• 15th – Alex Albon

Into Q3 marched: both McLarens, Verstappen, Russell, Antonelli, Hadjar, Alonso, Sainz, Gasly and a slightly shell-shocked Leclerc.

Q3 – Norris blinks, Piastri doesn’t

The top-10 shootout was always going to be about three names: Piastri, Norris and Verstappen. But straight away, Q3 showed us it was really about who could live with McLaren’s outright speed.

Verstappen was first out on a fresh set of softs – his third new set of the night – with Norris immediately behind and then Russell and Leclerc in tow. Leclerc, already running low on fresh rubber, had to go on used tyres for his first effort, as did Sainz, Gasly, Hadjar and Alonso.

On that first run, the papaya cars simply tore the field apart.

Norris produced a beautiful banker lap: 1:19.495, a full four tenths quicker than his own Q2 time. Piastri chased him home just 0.035s slower, once again strongest in the middle and final sectors but just short over the full lap. Nonetheless, McLaren had slammed a gap of almost four tenths to the rest of the field.

Verstappen could only manage third, over four tenths down on Norris. Russell slotted into P4. Behind them, Hadjar continued his breakout weekend in P5, ahead of Antonelli, Alonso, Sainz and Gasly. Leclerc’s attempt, on tired softs, ended in a wild spin and a cloud of gravel – no time on the board and a serious sweat on under that red helmet.

To add to the drama, Williams accidentally released Sainz with a strip of plastic wrapping stuck around his rear tyre, which promptly flew off around the lap and showered the racing line with debris. The combination of that and Leclerc’s gravel drag triggered a red flag at the perfect halfway mark in Q3.

The stewards noted a possible “unsafe condition” for car 55 (Sainz), promising an investigation after the session. Williams, meanwhile, got busy with tape and patches around the sidepod, suggesting the plastic had done a little more than just provide a fashion statement.

The final showdown – tiny twitch, huge consequence

When the session restarted, nobody rushed to join the track. The soft tyres were at their peak, the track was at its best, and no one wanted to be first sacrificial lamb to sweep up the dust.

With about three minutes left, George Russell broke cover, followed by Norris. This was where it all unravelled for the Championship leader.

Russell went for a deliberate double warm-up, trying to eke out every last drop of performance. Norris, though, was forced into a similar pattern for the wrong reason: on his first push attempt of the final run he attacked Turn 1 hard, but into Turn 2 the McLaren snapped just a fraction. A tiny twitch, a mid-corner lift – and Norris instantly knew the lap was gone.

He backed off to regroup, but the clock was not on his side. By the time he’d wound it back up, he simply didn’t have enough seconds left to cross the line before the chequered flag. The McLaren that had looked like a nailed-on pole favourite for much of the weekend never got a second Q3 shot.

That left the door wide open for Piastri and Verstappen.

Piastri was first to show his hand, and he absolutely nailed it. Purple sectors, inch-perfect lines, no hint of nerves – he beat Norris’ earlier benchmark and planted himself on provisional pole.

Verstappen, chasing hard behind, briefly went purple in sector one but saw his soft tyres cry enough by the end of the lap. The Red Bull slid around in the final corners and he lost time, crossing the line third, unable to punish Norris’ mistake. Russell improved but stayed fourth.

A front row of papaya, Verstappen and Russell looming behind, and two hungry young guns – Antonelli and Hadjar – ready to pounce if it all kicks off.

Quali Times 2025 Qatar F1 GP

The pole position lap time of last year was a 1:20.520 min set by Max Verstappen with the Red Bull RB21. Which was over 1.1 sec. slower than today's pole time.

✅ Don't forget to check out our 2025 Qatar Formula 1 Grand Prix Preview.

About the author

Leopold

Leopold Pleijsier founded F1-Fansite.com in 2001 and has followed Formula 1 since the early 1980s. He writes about daily F1 news, race weekends, drivers and the sport’s history.

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