After round 13 at Monza, Andrea Kimi Antonelli remains the benchmark on Best qualifying average at 2.38, but the Italian GP reshaped the chasing pack with Pierre Gasly jumping two places into ninth.
By Elena Marsh
The headline at the top of the Best qualifying average ranking is continuity: Andrea Kimi Antonelli keeps hold of first place with a season-long mean qualifying position of 2.38, and Mercedes also retains second with George Russell on 2.92. But Monza still mattered, because the weekend offered a sharp reminder of what this metric captures — the accumulation of every qualifying session, not just standout Saturdays — and how hard it is for anyone outside the very top to make meaningful inroads when the leader is banking a number that low across 13 races completed.
Antonelli’s own Italian Grand Prix underlined that point in a slightly counterintuitive way. He won the race, collecting 25 points, but his qualifying position at Monza was 7th — the kind of day that would look like a missed opportunity if you only judged on a single grid. In this ranking, it becomes just one data point within a larger body of work that still keeps him ahead of Russell and comfortably clear of the rest.
Pierre Gasly produced the most consequential movement of the update, and he did it the most direct way possible for a qualifying metric: by starting from the front. Gasly took pole position at Monza with a qualifying position of 1st, and that single weekend’s contribution was enough to lift him two places in the season ranking, from 11th to 9th, improving his Best qualifying average figure to 10.23 for Alpine F1 Team.
That jump had knock-on effects. Gasly is the only new entrant into the top 10 this round, and his rise forces an exit: Arvid Lindblad drops out of the top 10 list as Gasly takes over ninth. The contrast with Sunday is what makes this a useful story for this particular ranking — Gasly’s pole did not convert into victory, as he finished 7th and scored 6 points — but the Best qualifying average table is designed to reward that underlying one-lap ceiling even when race outcomes diverge.
The top three itself remains unchanged — Antonelli (2.38) ahead of Russell (2.92) and Lewis Hamilton third for Ferrari on 4.31 — but the picture immediately behind it is becoming more sensitive to small swings. Charles Leclerc moved up one place to fourth with an average of 4.54, nudging a rival down rather than needing a dramatic leap, which is typical at this stage of a season when most drivers have a substantial sample of sessions.
Leclerc’s gain came at the expense of Lando Norris, who slipped from fourth to fifth and now sits on 4.77. Norris’s Monza qualifying position of 9th is the type of weekend that can quietly reshape this metric even when the race result looks respectable — he finished 4th and took 12 points — because the ranking is explicitly about mean qualifying position across every session entered. The gap between 4.54 and 4.77 isn’t large, but it is enough to reorder positions.
The rest of the top-10 battle also saw incremental but meaningful churn. Oscar Piastri moved up one place from seventh to sixth on 5.54 for McLaren, while Max Verstappen dropped one place from sixth to seventh on 5.58 for Red Bull — a tiny numerical separation that shows how one cleaner qualifying sequence, or one more compromised one, can flip the order. With the methodology using the full field rather than just the top 10, those small differences accumulate relentlessly over time.
At the back end of the top 10, Liam Lawson fell from ninth to 10th on 10.77, just as Gasly arrived on 10.23, creating a clear new reference point for anyone trying to break into that group. The biggest movement magnitude this round was only two places, but that’s the nature of a season-average ranking: it rewards sustained efficiency, and it punishes the occasional dip in qualifying position more than fans might expect when looking solely at race-day points.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pierre Gasly | Alpine F1 Team | 11 | 9 | +2 | 10.23 |
| Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | 5 | 4 | +1 | 4.54 |
| Oscar Piastri | McLaren | 7 | 6 | +1 | 5.54 |
Antonelli’s 2.38 keeps the bar for year-long qualifying consistency extremely high, even with a Monza 7th on the grid. The more immediate story is how Gasly’s pole-driven rise to ninth reshapes the top-10 cut line, while Leclerc (4.54) and Norris (4.77) show how small qualifying swings can reorder the pack just behind Hamilton’s 4.31.