Eight rounds into 2026, Andrea Kimi Antonelli remains the benchmark on the Best qualifying average metric with a 1.88 mean grid position. The Austrian Grand Prix weekend brought only small ranking shifts, but they were telling: Charles Leclerc moved up to fourth while McLaren’s pair slipped back a place each.
By Elena Marsh
Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s grip on the Best qualifying average ranking remains intact after round 8 at the Red Bull Ring. His mean qualifying position stays at 1.88, and with the top three unchanged, the early-season shape of this table still points to one clear trend: Mercedes is setting the standard over one lap.
Austria underlined that point without needing a headline swing at the top. Antonelli qualified fourth and converted that into third in the race, banking 15 points across 71 laps. It’s not just that he’s fast; it’s that his weekends keep stacking up without the kind of off-days that inflate an average. With George Russell still second on 2.38, Mercedes holds the top two on a ranking that uses the full qualifying field and rewards repeatability.
The gap from the Mercedes duo to the rest is where the ranking becomes most volatile, because the numbers are close enough that one session can reshuffle positions. Lewis Hamilton holds third with a 4.38 average, and the battle behind him is now being framed by fine margins rather than big swings: the maximum movement magnitude this week was just 1 place.
That’s why Charles Leclerc’s incremental step matters. His move from fifth to fourth comes with a 4.88 average, and it was supported by a strong Austrian qualifying result of second on the grid. Even with a modest 4-point return for eighth in the race, the ranking’s focus is qualifying: consistently being near the front on Saturdays can keep nudging a driver upward even when Sunday doesn’t fully cash it in.
Leclerc was the headline gainer, but he wasn’t alone. Max Verstappen also climbed one spot, from seventh to sixth, with a 5.57 qualifying average, the kind of slow-burn progress that suggests his baseline Saturdays are tightening up as the season reaches eight completed races.
Further down the list, Sergio Pérez’s one-place improvement—from 20th to 19th for Cadillac F1 Team, on a 19.38 average—shows how this metric still has meaningful battles away from the front. Because the ranking is calculated across every qualifying session entered, the back-end positions can be just as sensitive to small improvements in starting position as the front-end fight is to tenths.
The most notable losses were concentrated at the sharp end of the non-Mercedes pack. Lando Norris dropped from fourth to fifth on a 5.25 average after qualifying sixth in Austria, and Oscar Piastri slipped from sixth to seventh on 5.63. When both McLarens move backward by a place in the same update, it hints at a wider pattern: the midfield-to-front boundary is being policed by tiny differences in qualifying position, not dramatic swings in form.
The stakes are simple: in a ranking where lower is better and the full field counts, a driver can’t rely on occasional peaks. Norris’s Austrian weekend—sixth on the grid and seventh at the flag for 6 points—illustrates how a merely solid qualifying can still cost ranking places when rivals are banking top-two starts. And at the other end, Fernando Alonso’s drop from 19th to 20th (19.63) shows the same pressure exists everywhere: there are no “safe” spots when the movements are small but constant, and the streak of stability at the top contrasts with churn just beneath it.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | 5 | 4 | +1 | 4.88 |
| Max Verstappen | Red Bull | 7 | 6 | +1 | 5.57 |
| Sergio Pérez | Cadillac F1 Team | 20 | 19 | +1 | 19.38 |
With Antonelli still on a 1.88 mean qualifying position and Russell on 2.38, Mercedes continues to control the top of a metric built on Saturday repeatability. The pressure point now is fourth through seventh: Leclerc’s rise to 4.88 and the McLaren drops (Norris 5.25, Piastri 5.63) show how quickly near-front qualifying form can trade places when margins are this narrow.