The Singapore Grand Prix flipped the top of the 2026 ‘Most positions gained’ ranking as Isack Hadjar’s recovery drive pushed him past Liam Lawson. Behind that, George Russell made one of the biggest ranking jumps of the round despite a much stronger qualifying than his grid spot suggested.
By Camille Fontaine
Isack Hadjar is the new leader of 2026’s ‘Most positions gained’ ranking after Singapore, moving from fifth to first on a season total of +34. The swing at the top is tight: Liam Lawson drops from first to second on +33, and Max Verstappen slips from second to third on +31, making this one of those standings that can change hands on a single high-variance Sunday.
Hadjar’s takeover was built on a blunt, ranking-friendly statistic at Marina Bay: he started 22nd and finished 10th over 62 laps, banking a +12 in one go. In a metric that simply sums grid-to-finish movement across classified races, that kind of single-race haul doesn’t just add points to the tally — it reorders the pecking order.
Hadjar’s Singapore result reads like a case study for this ranking’s methodology. Starting from a proper grid slot of 22 and finishing 10th meant he gained 12 positions in classification, and it was enough to turn a four-place rise in the table (5th to 1st) into the biggest headline of the week.
The context matters because the gap he’s now created is minimal: +34 plays +33. Lawson doesn’t need a dramatic turnaround to respond; he needs only to out-score Hadjar in net positions gained by a small margin across the remaining rounds. Hadjar’s advantage is real, but it is also fragile — exactly the kind of lead that demands repeatability rather than a single spike.
George Russell produced the largest movement inside the ranking’s table: up seven places, from 23rd to 16th, with a season total listed as +3 for Mercedes. The raw Singapore number was strong for the metric too — from 19th on the grid to 9th at the flag, a +10 across 62 laps — and it is the sort of Sunday that can rescue a season-long figure that has been stuck near neutral.
Russell’s weekend also contains an internal tension the grid-only metric can’t fully capture. His qualifying position was 6th but his grid position was 19th, which makes the gain from grid to finish look even more extreme without offering any explanation for the disconnect. For this ranking, though, the only thing that matters is the official grid slot and the final classification — and by that yardstick, Russell banked a major chunk in one race.
Lewis Hamilton is the clearest example of how a solid finish can still hurt in a grid-to-flag ranking. He started 3rd and finished 6th, a net loss of three positions in Singapore, and that drop pushed him down three places in the standings from 14th to 17th despite his season total still reading +2 for Ferrari.
At the front of this specific ranking, the movement was more about being overtaken than collapsing: Lawson slid one spot from 1st to 2nd while staying on +33, and Verstappen fell from 2nd to 3rd on +31. Verstappen did win from pole in Singapore, but that conversion offers almost no help here — a pole-to-win run carries little or no ‘positions gained’ value, which is why his season total can be strong yet still vulnerable to a Hadjar-style recovery drive.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| George Russell | Mercedes | 23 | 16 | +7 | +3 |
| Isack Hadjar | Red Bull | 5 | 1 | +4 | +34 |
| Lewis Hamilton | Ferrari | 14 | 17 | -3 | +2 |
Hadjar’s +34 lead is only one position gained clear of Lawson (+33), so the ranking’s top spot is now about consistency rather than a single outlier. Russell’s seven-place climb into 16th shows how one grid-to-flag swing can rapidly reshape the midfield of this table, while Hamilton’s slide underlines the risk for drivers who regularly start near the front: there’s far more downside than upside in ‘Most positions gained’.