Two rounds into 2026, the ‘Most positions lost’ table has a counterintuitive new leader: Andrea Kimi Antonelli, on 0 net places lost, after converting pole into victory in China. Max Verstappen’s retirement from P8 dropped him four places in the ranking and dragged his season total to +14.
By Diego Torres
Andrea Kimi Antonelli now heads the 2026 ‘Most positions lost’ ranking after Shanghai — and the number that puts him there is as clean as it gets: 0. This metric sums finish minus grid position across every classified race started from a proper grid slot, so leading it can be a sign of damage limitation as much as pace. In China Antonelli did the simplest thing possible to protect his score: he started P1 and finished P1, banking 25 points over 56 laps and adding no losses at all.
That was enough to flip the lead, because George Russell — the previous leader — drops to second despite also sitting on 0. With ties split by season points, Antonelli’s 25 from Shanghai becomes decisive in the early-season deadlock. After just 2 races completed, the ‘Most positions lost’ table is already showing a key dynamic: the safest way to avoid shedding places is to keep converting grid position into result, and Antonelli has used Shanghai to do exactly that.
The most violent movement in the ranking after the Chinese Grand Prix belongs to Max Verstappen. He falls four positions in the table — from sixth to 10th — and his season tally is now +14, a figure that reflects just how much ground has been surrendered relative to starting positions so far. The Shanghai story is stark in grid-versus-finish terms: Verstappen started eighth and was classified as Retired, recorded at P16 after 45 laps and scoring 0 points.
In a ranking built around net movement, that single race swing matters even more than it would in points. An eighth-to-16th classification is an eight-place slide in one go, and it immediately reframes Verstappen’s early season in this particular metric: he’s not merely off the ‘safe’ 0 line, he’s now deep into positive territory where every additional loss compounds quickly. With only two rounds on the board, that puts pressure on weekends where he qualifies toward the front; any further drift backwards will be amplified in a table that only cares about where you started versus where you ended.
Lewis Hamilton is another notable mover, dropping two ranking places from fifth to seventh after China. His cumulative figure sits at +3 for Ferrari — not a catastrophic number, but one that signals he has already given away more positions than the leaders. The key nuance here is that being close to the top is not about having the biggest swing one weekend; it is about avoiding steady leakage. In a season-long sum, +3 after 2 races is an early hole compared to the 0s at the front.
Behind the headline moves, Shanghai also nudged the mid-pack battle in the ranking’s top 10. Pierre Gasly (Alpine F1 Team) and Isack Hadjar (Red Bull) appear as new top-10 entrants at fifth and sixth respectively, both on +1, which is close enough to the front to keep them in the conversation if they can stabilise. Further back, Oliver Bearman (Haas F1 Team) sits eighth on +5, while Liam Lawson (RB F1 Team) is ninth on +7 — totals that underline how quickly this table can punish a couple of races that trend the wrong way relative to grid position.
Charles Leclerc holds third overall on +1, an example of how little margin exists right now between ‘near perfect’ and ‘already chasing’. With the top three unchanged but the leader changed, Shanghai has turned this into a season where the early narrative is less about who is losing the most, and more about who can keep their total pinned close to zero while others oscillate.
Two rounds is not enough for the table to be stable, but it is enough for patterns to start hardening. Antonelli and Russell at 0 shows how valuable a clean grid-to-flag conversion is in this metric; Leclerc, Gasly and Hadjar being clustered at +1 shows the next tier is one compromised result away from drifting into the Bearman/Lawson bracket at +5 and +7.
The other story to monitor is volatility: Verstappen’s -4 ranking movement in one weekend demonstrates how quickly a single result can reshape the bottom edge of the top 10. Because the ranking excludes pit-lane starts and only counts classified races from proper grid slots, every standard start carries full exposure. The implication is simple: the drivers who keep their net losses small early give themselves a buffer for the inevitable messy weekends later.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Max Verstappen | Red Bull | 6 | 10 | -4 | +14 |
| Lewis Hamilton | Ferrari | 5 | 7 | -2 | +3 |
| Andrea Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | 2 | 1 | +1 | 0 |
Antonelli’s move to P1 in ‘Most positions lost’ isn’t about losing lots of ground — it’s about refusing to lose any at all. With Russell also on 0 and Leclerc on +1, the front of the table is separated by tiny margins, while Verstappen’s jump to +14 shows how one Shanghai-sized setback can open a gap that takes multiple clean weekends to claw back.