Three races into 2026, Pierre Gasly has turned the Teammate head-to-head (race) ranking into an early statement: 3–0 against his Alpine team-mate. Behind him, the picture tightened as Oscar Piastri surged from 18th to fourth and George Russell slid out of the top 10.
By Elena Marsh
Pierre Gasly is the new leader of the Teammate head-to-head (race) ranking after the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka, moving to a spotless 3–0 record. With three races completed, that’s as clean a start as the methodology allows: in every weekend where exactly two cars were entered by the same team, Gasly has taken the “better classified” win over his Alpine team-mate.
The change at the top matters because it wasn’t a quiet consolidation of an existing advantage. The previous leader was Oliver Bearman, but Suzuka swung the ranking to Gasly, and it did so while Gasly’s own Japanese GP was measured rather than flashy: seventh on the grid, seventh at the finish, 6 points over 53 laps. In a head-to-head ranking, that kind of day can still be decisive if your closest rival inside the garage doesn’t beat you when it counts.
The early pack is already split into two clear groups: Gasly alone at 3–0, then a cluster on 2–1. Andrea Kimi Antonelli sits second with 2–1 for Mercedes and Charles Leclerc is third with 2–1 for Ferrari, showing how quickly a single intra-team loss dents the win rate when there are only three data points on the board.
That 2–1 theme runs through much of the top 10 and hints at how volatile this ranking will remain until more races accumulate. Oscar Piastri is now fourth for McLaren at 2–1, while Carlos Sainz (Williams) is eighth at 2–1, Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) ninth at 2–1 and Nico Hülkenberg (Audi) 10th at 2–1. With so many drivers separated by one head-to-head swing, the next time any of them finishes behind their team-mate the damage will be immediate.
Suzuka produced the biggest move in the table: Oscar Piastri rocketed from 18th to fourth, a 14-place gain that matches the maximum movement magnitude for the round. His record is now 2–1, and the jump captures what this metric rewards — stacking up “wins” against the one driver who has the same machinery, even if the wider race result is already strong.
Piastri’s Japanese Grand Prix adds context to that leap: he started third and finished second, scoring 18 points over 53 laps. In a head-to-head ranking that ignores points in favour of classified position, a high-scoring Sunday still only counts as one tick — but it’s the kind of tick that can transform your season-long profile when the baseline was as low as 18th in the standings.
The top 10 churn was as telling as the lead change. George Russell, Lewis Hamilton, Lando Norris and Arvid Lindblad exited the top 10 in the wake of Suzuka, highlighting how unforgiving a three-round sample can be when the ranking is built only on intra-team classification wins.
Russell’s drop was the sharpest: from fourth to 12th, down eight places, and now 1–2 in the Mercedes head-to-head while Antonelli is second at 2–1. That contrast shows the stakes inside the same team structure — one driver’s 2–1 looks like early momentum, the other’s 1–2 reads like immediate pressure. Hamilton also slipped seven places from sixth to 13th at 1–2 for Ferrari while Leclerc sits third at 2–1, and Norris fell from seventh to 14th at 1–2 as Piastri rose to fourth at 2–1. Even without any talk of causes, the numbers make the intra-garage swing unmistakable.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oscar Piastri | McLaren | 18 | 4 | +14 | 2–1 |
| Sergio Pérez | Cadillac F1 Team | 19 | 11 | +8 | 2–1 |
| George Russell | Mercedes | 4 | 12 | -8 | 1–2 |
Gasly’s 3–0 gives him a clear buffer over the 2–1 group, but the chase is tightly packed and highly sensitive to one race’s intra-team result. The more immediate storyline is inside Mercedes and McLaren: Antonelli (2–1) versus Russell (1–2), and Piastri (2–1) versus Norris (1–2), where a single swing can flip not just bragging rights but double-digit ranking positions this early.