Isack Hadjar’s 21st-to-6th climb at Spa drops a new eight-point haul into the ‘Points from outside the top 10’ ranking, vaulting him into fourth. At the front, Liam Lawson still leads despite scoring nothing in Belgium.
By Camille Fontaine
The headline change at Spa-Francorchamps comes from the depth of one recovery drive rather than a swap at the top. Liam Lawson remains the leader on 14 points, and the top three stays locked: Max Verstappen and Pierre Gasly are still tied on 12. Lawson’s Belgium weekend underlines how this metric can stall even for the leader: he finished 12th after starting 9th, scoring 0 and therefore adding nothing to a tally that only counts points earned when starting 11th or lower (or from the pit lane).
That detail matters because it keeps the ranking’s focus on genuinely compromised starting positions. Lawson’s overall lead holds because the chasers also didn’t find enough outside-top-10 scoring to dislodge him; Verstappen and Gasly remain level on 12, and there’s no reshuffling among the top three. Instead, Spa shifts the spotlight to the next layer, where one big swing can change the shape of the top 10 even without touching the summit.
Hadjar produced the ranking’s defining gap between grid and finish: he started 21st and finished 6th, taking 8 points and turning a back-row launch into a major haul. That single result is enough to move him up eight places in the table, from 12th to 4th, and it’s the biggest movement of the Belgian Grand Prix update.
There’s also an edge to the story given his listed details: he qualified 10th but started 21st, then still delivered the kind of recovery this ranking is designed to reward. With 8 now on his outside-top-10 ledger, he lands behind the 12-point tie for second and third, but suddenly becomes a factor in the next battle group rather than a name buried down the order.
Spa also showed the other side of the ranking: it’s easy to lose ground simply because someone else finds points from a poor grid slot. Alexander Albon slid three places, from 7th to 10th, still on 5 points, after a race that yielded nothing from a 15th-place start to a 15th-place finish. Carlos Sainz also slipped, down two places from 6th to 8th, holding on 6 points as the table compressed around him.
The biggest consequence is around the top-10 cut line. Hadjar’s leap creates a new entrant in the top 10, and it forces two names out: Gabriel Bortoleto and Esteban Ocon are the exits. Bortoleto’s drop is measurable: he falls from 9th to 11th, sitting on 4 points, and suddenly needs another outside-top-10 scoring day to get back into the visible part of the ranking.
The table is now split into clear clusters. Lawson’s 14 remains the target, but the immediate chase is defined by Verstappen and Gasly tied on 12, meaning the gap to the lead is only 2 in this specific metric. Hadjar’s 8 establishes a new reference point for the next group: it’s close enough to matter, but still requires another meaningful recovery to threaten the 12-point pair.
Further back, the margins are even finer. Norris appears in 7th on 6, the same value shown for Sainz in 8th, while Albon’s 5 in 10th illustrates how one non-scoring weekend from a low start can leave a driver vulnerable to being jumped. With the update also flagging a continuing streak, the broader theme is continuity: these points tend to arrive in bursts, but the ranking is decided by who can repeat the trick when circumstances force them out of the top 10 on the grid.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Isack Hadjar | Red Bull | 12 | 4 | +8 | 8 |
| Alexander Albon | Williams | 7 | 10 | -3 | 5 |
| Carlos Sainz | Williams | 6 | 8 | -2 | 6 |
Lawson’s 14-point lead survives a Spa weekend where he couldn’t add to it, but the pressure underneath is real: Verstappen and Gasly remain only 2 points back on 12. Hadjar’s 8-point surge to fourth changes the next tier of the fight and tightens the top-10 bubble, where small totals like 6, 5 and 4 are now exposed to one big recovery drive.