Three races into 2026, Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s win at Suzuka keeps him comfortably on top of the Best average race finish metric — and it underlines how quickly Mercedes has turned finishing position into an early-season weapon.
By Nadia Okafor
Andrea Kimi Antonelli remains the benchmark in the 2026 Best average race finish ranking after the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka, holding rank 1 with a 1.33 mean finishing position. With only three races completed, that number is as close as the sport gets to a clean early statement: across every race entry counted in the official classification, Antonelli has effectively lived at the sharp end.
Suzuka strengthened the picture rather than reshaping it. Antonelli started from grid 1, finished 1st, completed 53 laps and took 25 points — the sort of straightforward, high-value Sunday that protects an average. There’s no leader change flagged here, which matters: in a metric built to reward reliability of result (and which counts retirements by classification order), preserving a low mean this early can be as significant as making a gain.
The headline isn’t just Antonelli; it’s the Mercedes one-two in this ranking. George Russell sits 2nd with a 2.33 average, meaning Mercedes occupies both of the top two positions after round 3. In a measure where “lower is better”, that pairing implies Mercedes has been converting its race entries into consistently elite classifications — and doing it often enough to survive the minimum three-race threshold.
The spread to the nearest non-Mercedes driver is already visible even this early. Charles Leclerc is 3rd on 3.33 for Ferrari, a full finishing position behind Russell on average, while Lewis Hamilton is 4th on 4.33 in the second Ferrari. That’s not a championship table, but it is an early map of which teams are repeatedly placing cars where it counts: in the final classification, every time.
While the lead stayed stable, the top three did not: the signals flag that the top three changed after Suzuka. That’s a useful reminder of how twitchy this metric can be after only three races — a single result can swing an average by multiple tenths, and those tenths translate directly into places in the ranking.
The current shape of the top three tells its own story. Antonelli’s 1.33 is a different category to the rest; Russell’s 2.33 is strong but still a full place adrift; Leclerc’s 3.33 leads the non-Mercedes chase. With the ranking counting all classified results (including retirements at their classification order), maintaining a clean run of “Finished” results at the front becomes the simplest path to staying in this group.
Beyond the front four, the ranking quickly becomes a scrap where a small swing in finishing position would change the picture. Pierre Gasly is 5th with 7.67 for Alpine, followed by Liam Lawson 6th with 9.67 for RB. Then come two drivers tied on the same average: Lando Norris 7th and Max Verstappen 8th, both on 10.00 — separated only by the tie-break rules that sit behind this table.
The lower end of the top 10 is even tighter. Oliver Bearman is 9th on 11.33 for Haas, with Arvid Lindblad 10th also on 11.33 for RB. With a metric that includes every classified outcome, that kind of tie is a snapshot of how marginal the difference can be between “solid” and “slipping” once you’re outside the podium-level averages at the top.
Antonelli’s Suzuka win consolidates his hold on the lowest average finish (1.33) after three races, while Mercedes’ 1-2 with Russell (2.33) sets a clear reference point the rest — led by Leclerc on 3.33 — has to chip away at as the sample grows.