Five races into 2026, Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s 1.20 average finish remains the benchmark for finishing strength. The Canadian Grand Prix reshuffled the chase behind him, with Lewis Hamilton jumping to second while a non-start hit Arvid Lindblad hard.
By Camille Fontaine
Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s Canadian Grand Prix win at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve didn’t just add 25 points to his season; it reinforced the central theme of this metric: finishing position, every time, with no exemptions. With 5 races completed, Antonelli still sits first for Best average race finish with a remarkable 1.20, and the “streak” signal continuing suggests the pattern behind that number hasn’t broken yet.
What changed in Montreal wasn’t the leader — the ranking explicitly shows no lead change — but the shape of the fight behind him. The top three did change, and that matters in a metric where small swings can be decisive: when averages are this compressed near the front, one strong result can do more than merely add points; it can pull a driver into the clean air of the podium places in the ranking.
Hamilton is the headline mover at the sharp end: up 2 places from fourth to second, now sitting on a 4.20 average finish for Ferrari. That jump is significant because it’s not a mid-pack shuffle; it’s a move onto the ranking’s podium, with Charles Leclerc close behind in third on 4.40.
The numbers frame a very specific battle: Hamilton’s 4.20 versus Leclerc’s 4.40 is a narrow gap, and it puts emphasis on the next few classified results rather than one-off peak performances. In this ranking, the difference between second and third can come down to whether your “bad” day is still a solid classification or something worse — and with retirements counted at their official classification order, protecting the floor is often as valuable as raising the ceiling.
The largest single movement belongs to Arvid Lindblad, and it came with the kind of result this metric punishes most cleanly: a non-classified contribution. Lindblad qualified ninth and was set to start from grid 9 in Montreal, but his status reads “Did not start”, with 0 laps completed and 0 points. In the Best average race finish ranking, that translated into a brutal drop of 5 places, from 11th to 16th, leaving him on a 14.00 average finish.
At the other end of the RB F1 Team story, Liam Lawson turned Canada into a tangible recovery in the rankings. Starting 12th and finishing seventh (classified as “Lapped”) for 6 points, Lawson gained 3 positions in the average-finish table, moving from 14th to 11th with an 11.20 average. It’s a neat illustration of how this metric rewards simply being there at the flag: you don’t need a podium to climb, but you do need a classified finish to avoid the kind of hit Lindblad absorbed.
Mercedes had both ends of the story at once. Antonelli’s win kept him comfortably first on 1.20, but George Russell moved the other way: down 2 positions from second to fourth, now on a 6.00 average finish. In a ranking built on mean classification positions, that kind of slide can be a signal that the margin for error is shrinking — not necessarily that pace is gone, but that the overall finish record is no longer matching the very best.
Further back, the reshuffling continued. Franco Colapinto climbed 2 places from 10th to eighth with a 10.60 average finish, while Oscar Piastri fell 2 spots from eighth to 10th on 11.20. With no new entrants into the top 10 and no exits, the movement is about ordering rather than newcomers — the kind of gradual compression you expect once the minimum 3-race threshold has filtered out the noise and the averages begin to stabilise.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arvid Lindblad | RB F1 Team | 11 | 16 | -5 | 14.00 |
| Liam Lawson | RB F1 Team | 14 | 11 | +3 | 11.20 |
| Lewis Hamilton | Ferrari | 4 | 2 | +2 | 4.20 |
Antonelli’s 1.20 average finish is becoming the season’s reference point for week-to-week execution, but the story now is the reshaped chase: Hamilton’s rise to 4.20 puts him in striking distance of the ranking’s top two while tightening the Ferrari intra-team margin over Leclerc’s 4.40. Behind them, Canada underlined how unforgiving this metric is — a “Did not start” can erase weeks of steady finishes, while a single clean classified result can nudge a driver several places up a stabilising table.