Round 7 of the 2026 F1 season is firmly in the books – but who impressed in Barcelona-Catalunya and who had a firm weekend to forget?
Below, we’ve rated all 22 drivers based on their performance. Let us know in the comments if you agree!
The top five
Lewis Hamilton – 10
A vintage Hamilton drive. A stunning qualifying effort, just 0.064s slower than Russell gave him a platform, and he delivered. Was able to sit in the dirty air of Russell and not lose time, which opened up the strategy, which he forced through aggressively. Would have passed Russell without the VSC stop, but sometimes, you make your own luck.
George Russell – 8.5
Commanding Saturday performance boosts his ranking a lot owing to the near three-tenth gap to Antonelli. Did not have enough pace in clear air out-front to shake Hamilton, but still kept it going. Loses another half-point for being passed by Antonelli.
Nico Hulkenberg – 8.5
Missed FP1 and like so many others, felt it was less than ideal. Strong qualifying performance to finally crack the top 10, and was harrying Lawson whilst in the points before a freak gravel stone from Lawson activated the kill-switch. Lawson finished eighth, so Hulkenberg would have been in the points for the first time this season.
Lando Norris – 8
Nothing remarkable, but a quietly solid job from the world champion. Comfortably outclassed Oscar Piastri all weekend and was ahead of his main podium threat if anything happened to Hamilton or the Mercedes in Max Verstappen. It did, and scored him third as a result.
Liam Lawson – 8
Dented slightly by not being ‘best of the rest’ in the race thanks to Pierre Gasly’s seventh, but a strong performance throughout from the impressive New Zealander. Looked ‘best of the rest’ all weekend and is now delivering for his team.
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The bottom five
Alex Albon – 5
On a weekend Williams expected to struggle, the least Albon could do was to beat his team-mate, Sainz. Failed to do so in qualifying, but the ‘Not Classified’ result was the work of the TV camera becoming loose, meaning he was required to stop to fix it, thus turning his race into a test session.
Valtteri Bottas – 4.5
In a similar vain to Albon, all Bottas could hope to do all weekend was beat Sergio Perez. He lost out by two-tenths in qualifying, but reliability woes struck again in the race.
Charles Leclerc – 4
In a car capable of the front-row, he crashed in Q3. In a car capable of following closely behind others, and then looked devastatingly quick in clean air, he was sixth, 42s behind his team-mate before the power steering packed up and went home early.
Lance Stroll – 4
On a terrible weekend for Aston Martin, he did the only thing he could: beat Fernando Alonso in qualifying and end his 42-race run without doing so, going back to the 2024 British GP.
Fernando Alonso – 3.5
File this under ‘one to forget’ as he was out-qualified by Stroll for the first time in nearly two years, started in the pit-lane and then broke down in front of the ‘Alonso’ grandstand, to trigger a VSC, which was golden for Hamilton’s victory run…