Round 17 at Marina Bay didn’t change the top spot in Best average race finish, but it did reshuffle the podium places. Charles Leclerc’s Singapore runner-up was enough to displace George Russell for third on the season-long average.
By Julian Reyes
Andrea Kimi Antonelli remains the driver to beat on Best average race finish after the Singapore Grand Prix, holding P1 with a 3.47 mean classification across 17 races. His third place from fourth on the grid at Marina Bay reinforced the broader theme of this metric: it rewards the weekly habit of simply being there at the finish, because every race entry counts toward the average.
The bigger change at the front came immediately behind him. Charles Leclerc’s second place in Singapore moved him up one spot in the ranking, from fourth to third, with a 6.47 average. That single-position rise matters because it comes at the expense of George Russell, who drops from third to fourth after finishing ninth from 19th on the grid in the same race, leaving him on a 6.82 average.
With Antonelli unchanged at the top, the tension is in the spacing behind him. Lewis Hamilton stays second on a 5.18 average for Ferrari, but Leclerc’s move to third means Ferrari now occupies P2 and P3 on the metric — a sign of how strongly consistent high finishes are being converted into a season-long baseline, even in a ranking that also counts retirements in their classification order.
Singapore offered a clean example of the difference between a solid points day and a genuinely average-protecting result. Leclerc took 18 points for second; Antonelli scored 15 for third. Russell still scored, taking 2 points for ninth, but ninth is the sort of finish that drags at a driver’s mean when it’s aggregated over all 17 starts — especially when compared to a rival banking another top-two.
The maximum movement anywhere in the ranking after Singapore was only one place, but there were still meaningful shifts in the middle. Yuki Tsunoda improved from 13th to 12th for RB F1 Team and now sits on an 11.67 average. Nico Hülkenberg also gained one spot, moving from 16th to 15th for Audi with a 13.18 average.
Those climbs came with matching one-place drops for others around them: Franco Colapinto slid from 12th to 13th on a 12.18 average, while Esteban Ocon fell from 15th to 16th with a 13.41 average. In a metric built on the mean of every race classification, the implication is straightforward: these are the tight margins where a single strong classified finish can nudge you forward, and a single weaker result can undo that progress.
Singapore underlined the volatility baked into a statistic that counts every classified outcome, because four drivers failed to finish. That kind of attrition is exactly when Best average race finish can swing: retirements still become part of the average via their classification order, so simply reaching the flag can protect a season-long number.
That’s also why Antonelli’s continuity matters as much as his pace on any given Sunday. With the leader unchanged and only small positional shuffles elsewhere, the ranking is starting to look less like a weekly form guide and more like a long-run reliability and completeness test — and after 17 races, it’s getting harder for anyone behind to move the needle without stringing together more of the kind of top-end results Leclerc delivered at Marina Bay.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | 4 | 3 | +1 | 6.47 |
| Yuki Tsunoda | RB F1 Team | 13 | 12 | +1 | 11.67 |
| Nico Hülkenberg | Audi | 16 | 15 | +1 | 13.18 |
Antonelli’s 3.47 mean finish remains the benchmark after 17 races, but the story is the reshaped chasing pack: Leclerc’s move to P3 on 6.47 nudges Russell out, and with Ferrari holding P2 and P3, the next shifts are likely to come from who can protect their average with more top-end classified results — especially on weekends with multiple non-finishers.