Isack Hadjar’s climb from eighth to first rewrites the top of the season-long ‘Most overtakes’ table after the Belgian Grand Prix. Behind him, the top 10 reshuffles sharply, with George Russell and Nico Hülkenberg taking the biggest drops.
By Camille Fontaine
The Belgian Grand Prix has produced a new leader in the 2026 ‘Most overtakes’ ranking, and it’s a dramatic one: Isack Hadjar is now first with 56, taking over from previous leader Max Verstappen. Hadjar didn’t just edge ahead; he launched from eighth to first in one weekend, a seven-place jump that instantly redefines what had looked like Verstappen’s to manage.
The margins at the very top underline how fragile this lead can be. Hadjar’s 56 puts him just one ahead of Verstappen on 55, while Oscar Piastri sits third on 50. In other words, the lead changed hands, but the front of the table remains a three-driver squeeze rather than a runaway — and it means every race can flip the order without any of them needing an outlier score.
Hadjar’s Belgian Grand Prix weekend combined the raw opportunity for overtakes with a result that kept him in the fight to the flag: he started 21st and finished sixth, completing 44 laps and scoring 8 points. That kind of forward progress is exactly what this ranking is designed to capture, because it counts genuine lap-to-lap position gains while both cars are still running, while filtering out pit-stop shuffles unless they become lasting, strategic position changes by the finish.
The key is what the ranking now says about his season, not just one afternoon. Coming into Spa he was only eighth on this metric; leaving it he’s the new reference point on 56. Even with the table not detailing his single-race total here, the movement itself tells you the volume: a seven-place leap at round 10 only happens when a driver has been consistently in the mix for passes and then adds a big swing on top.
The other side of Hadjar’s rise is how quickly established names can be displaced when the ranking is this tight. George Russell is the biggest loser, sliding five places from third to eighth, now on 47. His Belgian Grand Prix shows why the system can punish a non-score hard: he started third but is classified as Retired, completing 0 laps and scoring 0 points, and retirements do not generate “phantom” overtakes because passes are only counted while both drivers are running.
Nico Hülkenberg also takes a notable hit, dropping three positions from fourth to seventh despite sitting on 48 — a total that actually matches Pierre Gasly’s 48, yet leaves Hülkenberg behind him in the ordering. That’s a reminder that this ranking is not simply about a single driver’s tally; it’s about relative momentum. Gasly is one of the week’s gainers, moving up from seventh to fifth, and those kinds of climbs compress the midfield of this table until small changes in output or missed opportunities become visible as multi-position swings.
Spa also reshaped the boundary that separates “in the conversation” from “watchlist”. Esteban Ocon is now 10th for Haas F1 Team on 41 after moving up two places from 12th, while Carlos Sainz drops out of the top 10 entirely, falling from 10th to 12th on 40 for Williams. That one-point-like gap in the displayed totals and the immediate swap in top-10 status captures the essence of this ranking: it rewards sustained race-to-race passing involvement, and it punishes any flat spot because everyone around you is still accumulating.
With 10 races completed, the picture is clearer but far from settled. Hadjar’s lead is only a single overtake ahead of Verstappen’s 55 in the season total, and Piastri’s 50 keeps third place within striking distance. Meanwhile, the churn around positions five through 10 — Gasly up to fifth, Hülkenberg down to seventh, Russell down to eighth, Ocon into 10th — hints at a second battle line where one strong Sunday can still rewrite the table as violently as the Spa weekend just did.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Isack Hadjar | Red Bull | 8 | 1 | +7 | 56 |
| George Russell | Mercedes | 3 | 8 | -5 | 47 |
| Nico Hülkenberg | Audi | 4 | 7 | -3 | 48 |
Hadjar’s move to 56 gives him the ‘Most overtakes’ lead, but only by one over Verstappen’s 55, so the top spot is still effectively a race-by-race duel. With Piastri on 50 and the top 10 changing hands at the bottom (Ocon into 10th on 41, Sainz down to 12th on 40), the next clean points swing or big recovery drive could reshuffle both the front and the cut line again.