Loading Experience...
Preparing your Formula Dream journey
Norris beat Antonelli to the first Madring pole by 11 thousandths. We predicted the pole time from Friday practice and missed by 0.014 seconds. Full results, grid penalty and the radio.
Lando Norris took pole for the first Spanish Grand Prix at the Madring with a 1:31.824, beating Kimi Antonelli by 0.011 seconds. Max Verstappen was third, 0.140 behind, with both Ferraris next.
Race update: Norris finished third on Sunday after a slow stop under the Virtual Safety Car, and Kimi Antonelli won. Full results in our Spanish GP race report.
Every Madrid session is in our 2026 Spanish Grand Prix team radio archive with the audio and a colour-coded transcript, including the moment Antonelli was told the margin.
| Grid | Driver | Team | Best time | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lando Norris | McLaren | 1:31.824 | |
| 2 | Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | 1:31.835 | +0.011 |
| 3 | Max Verstappen | Red Bull | 1:31.964 | +0.140 |
| 4 | Lewis Hamilton | Ferrari | 1:32.013 | +0.189 |
| 5 | Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | 1:32.019 | +0.195 |
| 6 | George Russell | Mercedes | 1:32.149 | +0.325 |
| 7 | Oscar Piastri | McLaren | 1:32.294 | +0.470 |
| 8 | Liam Lawson | Red Bull | 1:32.316 | +0.492 |
| 9 | Franco Colapinto | Alpine | 1:32.903 | +1.079 |
| 10 | Arvid Lindblad | Racing Bulls | 1:33.041 | +1.217 |
Caption: Top ten from Q3, from the official classification. The top ten grid is unchanged by the stewards.
Out in Q2: Nico Hulkenberg (11th, 1:33.223), Gabriel Bortoleto (12th), Esteban Ocon (13th), Pierre Gasly (14th), Yuki Tsunoda (15th) and Alex Albon (16th).
Out in Q1: Fernando Alonso, Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas, who start 17th, 18th and 19th, and Carlos Sainz, who qualified 17th but starts 20th after a penalty.
No time: Oliver Bearman and Lance Stroll. Bearman crashed heavily at the end of the delayed third practice session and Haas could not repair the car in time, while Aston Martin reported a suspected water pressure problem on Stroll's car, according to The Race.
Before a single lap had been run here, our race preview measured how much faster pole is than the best first practice lap at circuits teams already understand: 2.53% at Spa, 2.45% at Zandvoort, 2.36% at the Hungaroring and 1.47% at Monza, a median of 2.41%.
George Russell set the best FP1 lap on Friday at 1:34.077. Taking 2.41% off that gives 1:31.810.
| Session | Fastest legal lap | Driver | Found since FP1 |
|---|---|---|---|
| FP1 | 1:34.077 | Russell | |
| FP2 | 1:33.662 | Antonelli | 0.44% |
| FP3 | 1:32.797 | Antonelli | 1.36% |
| Qualifying | 1:31.824 | Norris | **2.39%** |
Caption: Fastest laps not deleted by the stewards, from the official timing feed.
The field found 2.39%. The prediction was 2.41%. Pole was 0.014 seconds slower than forecast.
The preview said that if the Madring behaved like a circuit nobody had driven, the gain would be bigger, because drivers would be learning the lap as well as finding grip. It did not. By Saturday afternoon a brand new circuit was improving at almost exactly the rate of circuits with decades of data.
We measure from the fastest lap that passes a telemetry health check, and Norris's passed cleanly, so these figures come from the pole lap itself.
Friday's best clean practice lap, Leclerc's 1:33.775, averaged 204.8 km/h. Qualifying was about 4 km/h a lap quicker on average.
The margin came in the first sector. Norris was fastest of anyone through sector one at 28.226. Verstappen was quickest in the middle sector (32.730) and Antonelli in the last (30.521). Put those three together and the theoretical best lap is 1:31.477, a third of a second under pole.
The traces show how close it was: Norris and Antonelli were within a few kilometres an hour of each other for almost the whole 5.3 km.
Friday produced 55 deleted laps across two practice sessions, 16 of them at Turn 17 alone, which our Madring circuit guide tracked corner by corner.
Qualifying produced six. Three of those were at Turn 6: Norris, Piastri and Albon all had a lap removed there in Q1. Turn 17, the worst corner on Friday, cost only Lindblad a time.
Antonelli's engineer broke the news straight after the flag: "Ok mate, it's P2 by just 11 milliseconds." Antonelli's reply was not suitable for broadcast.
Verstappen's engineer summed up a weekend in which Red Bull were never quite at the front but never far away: "Well done Max, super strong P3."
And Franco Colapinto, into Q3 and ninth for Alpine, did not hold back.
Norris, on his in lap, called it one of his best: "Oh, that made me happy."
Lando Norris, with a 1:31.824 for McLaren, 0.011 seconds ahead of Kimi Antonelli.
Norris, Antonelli, Verstappen, Hamilton, Leclerc, Russell, Piastri, Lawson, Colapinto and Lindblad make up the top ten. Carlos Sainz starts 20th after a three-place penalty, and Oliver Bearman and Lance Stroll did not set a time.
The stewards found he impeded Valtteri Bottas at Turn 7 in Q1, and gave him a three-place grid drop.
The race lap record is George Russell's 1:35.587, set on lap 49 of the 2026 Spanish Grand Prix. The fastest lap ever driven there is Norris's qualifying lap of 1:31.824, set on 12 September 2026.
The Formula Dream app carries live driver radio as it is broadcast, with the transcript running beside it, plus a live timing Dashboard (currently in beta) and every FIA document of the weekend, including penalty decisions like Sainz's, the moment they are published.
Free, no subscription, independent. Not affiliated with Formula 1.
Everyone knows the phrase as box box box. The radio says otherwise: nearly three quarters of real pit calls say the word exactly once, and the busiest session for pit calls is not the race.
