Fernando Alonso’s season-long opening-lap recovery total moved him from third to first after the Canadian Grand Prix, overturning Carlos Sainz’s early advantage. Behind them, Cadillac’s Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas both climbed, while Alexander Albon dropped out of the top 10 entirely.
By Camille Fontaine
The Canadian Grand Prix flipped the top of the 2026 “Most positions gained on lap one” ranking, with Fernando Alonso moving from third to first and taking the lead on +18. That shift ends Carlos Sainz’s run at the top: Sainz slips from P1 to P2 despite still holding a hefty +15 season total, while Alonso’s gain in Montreal was enough to re-order a fight that has been tight at the front since the early rounds.
The stakes in this ranking are brutally specific: it rewards what you can salvage immediately after a poor grid slot, and Montreal underlined that even rough Sundays can still feed the season narrative. Alonso started 19th and was classified 20th (Retired after 23 laps), while Sainz’s grip on first has been eroded to second on tie-break-free numbers alone: +18 now leads +15, and that’s a meaningful swing in a category where the margins are measured in single places per race.
There were notable shifts further down too. Sergio Pérez’s Cadillac jumped three places in the standings from 10th to 7th on +10 after he started 20th and was classified 17th (Retired, 39 laps), while teammate Valtteri Bottas entered the top 10 at ninth after rising from 11th to 9th on +9. The counterpoint was Alexander Albon, whose Williams fell five spots from sixth to 11th despite a still-positive +7 season figure — and his Canada result was the sort that can wipe out hard-earned ranking position quickly, starting 18th and ending classified 21st (Retired, 11 laps).
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alexander Albon | Williams | 6 | 11 | -5 | +7 |
| Sergio Pérez | Cadillac F1 Team | 10 | 7 | +3 | +10 |
| Fernando Alonso | Aston Martin | 3 | 1 | +2 | +18 |
With +18, Alonso now has a clear three-place buffer over Sainz’s +15 at the top, turning the lead into something that can’t be flipped by a single modest swing. The midfield battle is even tighter: Pérez’s move to seventh and Bottas’s entry at ninth signal momentum for Cadillac, while Albon’s drop to 11th shows how quickly one weekend can reshape the top-10 cut line even when a driver remains net-positive on the season.