Sadly, Kevin's victory will be of he leads at the end of lap 1.

So.....? It's still awesome he's even in this position! Definitely one of the strengths of the current qualy system which allows for upsets

Wonder how often has it happened for a team to qualify first and last (discounting crashes). Maybe during the Luca Badoer days at Ferrari?

Edit: Nope.

I'm actually curious to the answer to this.

I assume we're excluding post-qualifying penalties?

Me too. I already checked many pairs (like Irvine-Schumacher, Massa-Schumacher, Kimi-Massa, Kimi-Montoya, Häkkinen-Coulthard etc.) and found none.

And just looking through the qualifying results doesn't always give explanation for the last place. Usually it's safe to assume it was due to a penalty or crash/mechanical failure.

so that's it, in the modern era of the sport (in which rules specify you must build your own car and enter 2 per race) is the first time that had happened. Congratulations to Haas for this amazing feat

But 2022 Magnussen is another man. He races fair and doesn't block dirty anymore.

alright I did some quick research and I'm not counting privateers (which ran different chassis or engines), post race penalties, mechanical failures during qualifying, crashes, etc.

I am counting those who were qualified and stayed ahead of other drivers that didn't qualified (so counting for the starting grid), again for the reasons of the privateers and those teams that entered just one car for obvious reasons

so we have:

-1956 British GP at Silverstone. Moss on pole, Jack Brabham on final spot with a Maserati (28 starters)
-1957 Argentine GP at Buenos Aires. Moss on pole, and Luigi Piotti last with Maseratis (14 starters)
-1958 Argentine GP at Buenos Aires. Fangio on pole, and Horace Gould dead last, with Maseratis (10 cars starting)
-1959 British GP at Aintree where Brabham was the pole and Mike Taylor started 24th, both driving Cooper Climax

those 4 could have drivers from different teams but they were running the same cars

there are many instances where cars were entered from the same team but one was F1 and the other was F2, forfaits and withdrawals and in the modern era, after privateers could not enter races anymore we have some exceptions like Verstappen winning the sprint in Silverstone/2021 and Perez having issues, thus both having pole and last, Monaco 2016 where Ricciardo managed to get pole and Verstappen had the worst time in Q1 (but wasn't last as Nasr wasn't able to take part in Q1 with engine problems)

of course back when Lotus, March, Tyrrell and Brabham sold their old cars to privateers this number increase sensibly but could have been modified by the new entrant to fit new engine or parts

so that's it, in the modern era of the sport (in which rules specify you must build your own car and enter 2 per race) is the first time that had happened. Congratulations to Haas for this amazing feat