Round 11 at the Hungaroring didn’t change the top of the Best qualifying average table: Andrea Kimi Antonelli still leads on 1.91, ahead of George Russell and Lewis Hamilton. The movement came deeper down, where Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon nudged forward while Carlos Sainz slipped back after qualifying 18th.
By Nadia Okafor
The headline after Budapest is continuity at the very top. Andrea Kimi Antonelli remains the leader of the 2026 Best qualifying average ranking after 11 rounds, holding a remarkable 1.91 mean qualifying position across every session he has entered. With the ranking built on full-field qualifying positions rather than a top-10 cut-off, that number is less about a single Saturday peak and more about relentless repeatability — and Hungary did nothing to break that pattern.
Antonelli’s Hungaroring weekend fitted that profile: he qualified 4th and converted it into 3rd in the race, scoring 15 points. More importantly for this metric, his average remains comfortably clear of the next-best: Mercedes team-mate George Russell sits 2nd on 3.09, while Lewis Hamilton is 3rd on 4.18 for Ferrari. With no change in the top three and the leader unchanged, the story becomes how the midfield shuffles can — slowly but meaningfully — reshape the wider qualifying-order picture as the sample grows.
Having both Antonelli (1.91) and Russell (3.09) in the top two underlines how much this ranking rewards consistent access to the front rows rather than occasional spikes. Even without head-to-head session detail, the gap between them tells its own tale: 1.18 positions on average is a big margin in a metric that is often decided by tenths of a place over a season. That Antonelli can qualify 4th at the Hungaroring and still be tracking a sub-2.0 average is a reminder of how high his earlier qualifying standard has been.
Hamilton’s 4.18 in 3rd gives the top three a stable shape heading out of round 11. In practical terms, that stability raises the bar for anyone looking to break in: to dislodge Hamilton from 3rd, a challenger would need a run of front-end qualifying results that drags their mean down across multiple sessions, because one strong Saturday won’t move a season-long average much at this stage.
The biggest swing was only two places, which tells you how compressed — and stubborn — this table becomes once 11 races’ worth of qualifying is baked in. Fernando Alonso was the main gainer, climbing from 21st to 19th with a 19.64 average. In Hungary he qualified 16th, a result that, while not glamorous, was still enough to pull his mean slightly closer to the pack and lift him two positions.
Esteban Ocon edged forward too: from 17th to 16th for Haas F1 Team, on a 15.27 qualifying average. That move matters because it places him directly ahead of one of the weekend’s losers in this metric — and it illustrates how narrow the margins are once you’re operating in the mid-teens of average qualifying position.
Carlos Sainz was the clearest example of how a single lowly grid slot can still sting, even in an average-based ranking. He qualified 18th for Williams at the Hungaroring and slipped from 16th to 17th overall, leaving him on a 15.40 mean qualifying position for the season. His race ended 18th, lapped, but it’s the Saturday number that bites hardest here: when you’re already carrying a mid-pack average, an 18th-place qualifier pushes in the wrong direction immediately.
Behind him, Cadillac F1 Team had a rougher-looking picture in the lower reaches: Sergio Pérez fell from 19th to 20th on 19.73, and Valtteri Bottas from 20th to 21st on 19.82. None of these drops are dramatic in isolation, but together they highlight a key truth about this ranking: by round 11, progress tends to be incremental, and the ‘streak’ of an unchanged leader can continue even while the midfield trades places underneath.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fernando Alonso | Aston Martin | 21 | 19 | +2 | 19.64 |
| Esteban Ocon | Haas F1 Team | 17 | 16 | +1 | 15.27 |
| Carlos Sainz | Williams | 16 | 17 | -1 | 15.40 |
Antonelli’s 1.91 keeps the Best qualifying average lead firmly in place after 11 rounds, with Russell (3.09) and Hamilton (4.18) still the nearest benchmarks. The more immediate fight is behind: small moves like Alonso’s jump to 19th and Sainz’s slip to 17th show how one session can still nudge season-long trends when positions are tightly packed.