Round 17 at Marina Bay flipped the top of the ‘Most positions lost’ table as Pierre Gasly’s latest net drop pushed him past the previous leader. Behind him, Ferrari suddenly has two drivers pulling in opposite directions on the same metric.
By Nadia Okafor
Pierre Gasly is the new leader of 2026’s ‘Most positions lost’ ranking after the Singapore Grand Prix, moving from second to first with a season total of −6. That lead change matters because it’s the clearest signal yet that his year has been defined by giving away track position on Sundays: in Singapore he started 7th and finished 11th, a net loss of four places in a race where he was classified as lapped after 61 laps.
The swap at the top was enabled by George Russell’s sudden collapse down the table. Russell came into Marina Bay as the previous leader of this unwanted list, but has now dropped seven spots in the ranking, from first to eighth, with a season mark of +3. This metric is cumulative and unforgiving: once a driver stops hemorrhaging net places, they can fall quickly as others add fresh losses to their tally.
Gasly’s Singapore result is a neat encapsulation of what this ranking captures: grid position versus final classification, with pit-lane starts excluded. He qualified 8th, started 7th, and ended 11th. That four-place drop is exactly the kind of swing that can reshape the season totals this deep into the year — especially when the top of the table is tight enough that a single weekend can overturn the leader.
Charles Leclerc’s position just behind Gasly reinforces how fine the margins are at the front. Leclerc is now second on −4 after also moving up one place in the ranking, from third to second. With only two net places separating Gasly and Leclerc in the cumulative sum, the next few races don’t need dramatic collapses to reshuffle the top again — steady, smaller losses can be enough.
Russell’s ranking drop is the headline movement even if his race result wasn’t. He started 19th and finished 9th, scoring 2 points after 62 laps — a net gain of 10 positions on the road that typically moves a driver away from the ‘most lost’ end of this metric. The consequence is visible in the standings movement: a seven-place slide in the ranking, from P1 to P8, as his season sum sits at +3 rather than a negative total.
At the other extreme, Isack Hadjar’s season number is the biggest outlier in the key movers: +34. He fell four places in the ranking, from 19th to 23rd, an indication that his cumulative grid-to-finish ledger is trending the opposite way to the table’s ‘leaders’. One race-wide note adds context without changing the ranking logic: Hadjar was also the biggest grid-to-finish mover of the Singapore Grand Prix itself, gaining 12 places across the race.
Ferrari’s Singapore weekend produced a striking divergence on a ranking built around lost ground. Leclerc is now second overall on −4, while Lewis Hamilton jumped three places up the ranking order — from eighth to fifth — with a season figure of +2. In other words, one Ferrari sits among the drivers most prone to ending races behind their grid slots, while the other is trending away from that danger zone.
Hamilton’s own Singapore race explains why he’s moving in the safer direction on this table: he started third and finished sixth, scoring 8 points after 62 laps. That’s a three-place loss in isolation, but the season-long sum still reads +2, which keeps him outside the very worst end of the list. It underlines how this ranking can tell a different story than a single weekend: one bad Sunday doesn’t necessarily define the season trend, but repeated small losses absolutely can.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| George Russell | Mercedes | 1 | 8 | -7 | +3 |
| Isack Hadjar | Red Bull | 19 | 23 | -4 | +34 |
| Lewis Hamilton | Ferrari | 8 | 5 | +3 | +2 |
Gasly’s move to −6 puts a small but real buffer over Leclerc’s −4, while Russell’s fall from P1 to P8 shows how quickly a driver can drop out of the worst zone if their weekends stop adding net losses. With the top still tight, incremental grid-to-flag position swings remain enough to reshuffle the leaders again.