After three races, Andrea Kimi Antonelli remains the benchmark in average race finish, and Mercedes has both of its drivers occupying the top two slots. The Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka reinforced the shape of the table even as the top three order continues to evolve.
By Julian Reyes
The headline of the best average race finish ranking after the Japanese Grand Prix is not upheaval but consolidation: Andrea Kimi Antonelli still leads, and he’s doing it with a staggering 1.33 mean finishing position across the season’s first three races. Suzuka underlined that trend in the most emphatic way possible — pole, a win, and 25 points — and because this metric counts every classified result across all race entries, that kind of clean, repeatable execution is disproportionately valuable early in a year.
What gives Antonelli’s advantage added weight is that it comes with internal pressure built in. George Russell sits second on 2.33, making this a Mercedes one-two in the ranking and turning “best average finish” into a team-mate reference point as much as a championship-adjacent curiosity. It’s also a sign of how unforgiving the arithmetic is at this stage: with only three races completed and a minimum of three required to even appear, small swings in finishing position can re-order contenders quickly — but there’s no signal yet of a change at the top, and Antonelli’s lead has held.
Behind them, the table shows the beginnings of a multi-team chase rather than a single clear alternative. Charles Leclerc is third on 3.33, leading Ferrari’s presence ahead of Lewis Hamilton in fourth on 4.33, a gap that hints at how a single off-week can echo through a mean this early. Further back, Pierre Gasly (7.67) heads a tightly packed midfield mix in the top 10 that includes Liam Lawson (9.67) and a dead heat on 10.00 between Lando Norris and Max Verstappen — the sort of tie that, by the ranking’s rules, can only be separated by season points and then alphabetically if it persists.
With three races completed, Antonelli’s 1.33 average finish is the early-season reference, and Russell’s 2.33 keeps the closest pressure inside Mercedes. The top three continuing to reshuffle while the lead stays fixed suggests this ranking may become a week-by-week test of who can avoid the single damaging result that inflates an average in a small sample.