Fernando Alonso’s Dutch Grand Prix opener turned a season-long climb into the top spot, flipping the lead of 2026’s ‘Most positions gained on lap one’ ranking. Behind him, the fight around the top 10 tightened as Colapinto surged upward and Hamilton dropped out.
By Nadia Okafor
The Dutch Grand Prix has produced a change at the top of 2026’s ‘Most positions gained on lap one’ ranking, with Fernando Alonso moving from second to first on +33 for Aston Martin. That puts him five places clear of the man he displaced: Carlos Sainz, who slips from first to second on +28 for Williams.
It’s a lead change that fits the profile of the metric. This table rewards repeatable lap-one recovery across the year — summing grid position minus a driver’s classified position at the end of lap 1, with races lacking lap-1 timing excluded rather than filled in. Alonso didn’t win at Zandvoort (Lando Norris converted pole into victory), but he did deliver the kind of early-lap net gain that moves this ranking, and in round 12 it was enough to swing the overall lead away from Sainz.
Alonso’s +33 sets a new benchmark, but the shape of the top end is still close enough to matter. Sainz on +28 remains within one big opening-lap swing of reversing the order again, while Esteban Ocon holds third on +23 for Haas F1 Team — a 10-place buffer back from the lead that keeps him in the conversation if the top two have a quieter run of lap-one gains.
The stability is notable: the top three didn’t change in membership after Zandvoort, even though the leader did. That contrast underlines how this ranking behaves over 12 completed races — it’s not just one standout start, but the accumulation of small, repeated recoveries that keeps drivers anchored near the top while others move around them.
Franco Colapinto produced the most meaningful upward nudge among the key movers, climbing from ninth to seventh for Alpine F1 Team with a season total of +17. In a ranking built on marginal gains, a two-place jump in the table is significant because it usually means outperforming multiple rivals over enough counted races to pass them without any tie-breaker help.
At the other end of the same squeeze, Liam Lawson fell two places from sixth to eighth despite sitting on a positive season figure of +16 for Red Bull. The nuance matters: Lawson’s tally says he has still been a net gainer on lap one across the year, but the Zandvoort update shows others are stacking up gains faster, turning a previously top-six slot into a more exposed position just outside it.
Pierre Gasly is now the driver holding down 10th, on +13 for Alpine F1 Team — a threshold that often becomes the first pressure point in this kind of ranking, because a single strong lap-one swing can be enough to trade places. The flip side is that Lewis Hamilton has dropped out of the top 10 entirely, highlighting that even established names can be vulnerable in a metric that only cares about lap-one net movement from proper grid slots.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s movement shows another layer: he rose from 20th to 18th for Mercedes despite a season total of -12, which means he has lost more places than he has gained on lap one across his counted races. Even with the negative number, a two-rank step forward suggests the lower end of the order is volatile — drivers can climb simply by being less costly on lap one than the people around them, even if their overall balance remains in the red.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Franco Colapinto | Alpine F1 Team | 9 | 7 | +2 | +17 |
| Andrea Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | 20 | 18 | +2 | -12 |
| Liam Lawson | Red Bull | 6 | 8 | -2 | +16 |
Alonso’s move to +33 turns the top of the lap-one gains ranking into a live two-driver duel, with Sainz only five behind on +28 and Ocon still within range on +23. The bigger signal from Zandvoort is churn around the fringes: Colapinto’s climb and Hamilton’s top-10 exit show that a couple of strong opening laps can quickly reshape the order behind the lead.