Round 8 at the Red Bull Ring flips the top of the Momentum ranking: Isack Hadjar replaces Lewis Hamilton, while Oscar Piastri’s recent scoring surge drives the biggest jump of the week.
By Julian Reyes
The Momentum ranking has a new name at the top after the Austrian Grand Prix: Isack Hadjar. The Red Bull driver’s +6.53 momentum score moves him to P1, displacing previous leader Lewis Hamilton and underlining just how sharply Hadjar’s recent three-race scoring rate has accelerated compared to his earlier-season baseline.
Hadjar’s lead is far from a runaway, though. Hamilton is only one spot back in P2 on +5.47, keeping the fight at the top tight even as the leadership changes hands. And with Oscar Piastri now up to P3 on +4.07, the top three is not just reshuffled — it is suddenly crowded with drivers whose recent points-per-race run is meaningfully stronger than what they managed in the earlier part of 2026.
Piastri’s rise is the headline movement beneath the lead change. From 17th to 3rd — a 14-place leap, the largest movement magnitude this week — his Momentum ranking score of +4.07 reflects a recent run that is decisively outperforming his pre-window average. His Austrian Grand Prix result offers a concrete snapshot of that form: starting 7th, finishing 4th, and taking 12 points over 71 laps.
Hadjar’s own Sunday was less about a single huge points haul and more about keeping his trend moving in the right direction. From 8th on the grid he finished 6th, collecting 8 points across 71 laps — enough, in the context of the last three rounds versus earlier 2026, to edge him ahead of Hamilton at the summit. With Hamilton still holding +5.47, the lead swap reads less like a collapse for Ferrari’s driver and more like an additional gear from Hadjar in this specific, form-based metric.
The post-Austria top-10 picture also shifted at the margins, and it matters because this ranking is designed to capture inflection points. George Russell is the most notable new entrant: he climbs from 22nd to 9th, a 13-place gain, to land inside the top 10 on +0.93 for Mercedes. That number is modest compared to the leaders, but it is still positive — evidence that Russell’s recent three-race points rate has moved ahead of his earlier-season level.
Those gains came alongside exits. Franco Colapinto and Fernando Alonso drop out of the top 10, with Colapinto’s fall particularly steep: down 12 places from 7th to 19th and now sitting on −2.67. It is the clearest ‘cooling-off’ signal in this update — not because of one data point, but because the last three rounds have been significantly less productive than what he banked earlier in the year.
Colapinto’s slide is reinforced by the Austrian weekend itself. He qualified 16th, started 16th, finished 15th, and scored 0 points, classified as Lapped after 70 laps. In a metric built on recent points-per-race momentum, a score of −2.67 captures the stark contrast between his current three-race output and his earlier-season standard — and explains why he has tumbled from a once-relevant P7 to outside the conversation at P19.
Not every drop is a sign of negative momentum, though. Liam Lawson slips from 4th to 7th while still posting +1.87, a reminder that this is a relative ranking: you can improve your rate and still be overtaken by rivals improving more. At the other end, Lando Norris moves only from 19th to 17th, yet his −0.60 shows that even small positional gains can mask a driver whose recent scoring pace is slightly worse than their earlier 2026 baseline.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oscar Piastri | McLaren | 17 | 3 | +14 | +4.07 |
| George Russell | Mercedes | 22 | 9 | +13 | +0.93 |
| Franco Colapinto | Alpine F1 Team | 7 | 19 | -12 | −2.67 |
Hadjar’s move to P1 on +6.53 resets the benchmark in a tightly packed lead group, with Hamilton on +5.47 and Piastri surging to +4.07. The more telling mid-pack shift is Russell’s entry to the top 10 at +0.93, while Colapinto’s drop to −2.67 shows how quickly this metric can flag a genuine cooling phase over just three rounds.