The Belgian Grand Prix didn’t change the leader of the 2026 ‘Most positions gained’ ranking, but it did rewrite the chasing pack: Isack Hadjar rocketed from 18th to 3rd after a 21st-to-6th recovery at Spa.
By Camille Fontaine
Max Verstappen remains the reference point in 2026’s ‘Most positions gained’ ranking after Spa, still sitting P1 on a season total of +20. The Belgian Grand Prix itself wasn’t an obvious ‘positions gained’ bonanza for him — he finished third from second on the grid — but the bigger story is that nobody did enough across round 10 to dislodge him from the top.
What did change, emphatically, was the shape of the podium behind him. Liam Lawson is now second on +17, while Isack Hadjar has erupted into third on +15. With 10 races completed, that leaves Verstappen’s cushion over Lawson at three positions, and over Hadjar at five — margins that can shrink quickly when a single Sunday swings the per-race grid-to-flag arithmetic.
Hadjar produced the biggest single movement in the ranking after the Belgian Grand Prix: up 15 places in the season standings, from 18th to 3rd. That leap is directly in line with what he did on Sunday at Spa-Francorchamps, turning a 21st-place grid start into sixth at the finish over 44 laps, scoring 8 points and banking a +15 gain for the ranking’s methodology.
That kind of result doesn’t just add to a total; it changes the conversation around who might realistically threaten the top. Before Spa, Hadjar wasn’t even in the top 10 of the ‘Most positions gained’ table. Now he’s on the overall podium, and the ranking’s signal flags underline the scale of the shift: the top three changed, and the maximum movement magnitude of the week was 15 — Hadjar’s number.
Lando Norris also made Spa count in ranking terms, climbing eight spots in the season table from 13th to fifth, now sitting on +11. That places him not only as one of the weekend’s key movers, but also as a new presence in the top 10 list — a meaningful mid-season checkpoint in a metric built on repeated recoveries rather than one-off spikes.
Those entries came with exits. Alexander Albon and Lewis Hamilton dropped out of the top 10 after round 10, a reminder that this ranking is unforgiving: it’s not about points, but about consistently converting grid positions into better classified results across the season’s classified races. Norris’s rise and those departures illustrate the squeeze developing just below the podium places.
Not every solid race day helps in this particular table. Arvid Lindblad is the clearest example from Spa: he finished ninth from seventh on the grid — a two-place loss on the day — and that coincided with a slide of four places in the season ranking, from 11th down to 15th, despite still showing a season total of +4. In a metric that adds up net gains, giving places away can quickly undo earlier progress.
There were smaller but notable shuffles elsewhere: Fernando Alonso fell from fifth to eighth (still on +11), and Sergio Pérez slipped from sixth to ninth (also +11). With Verstappen unchanged on +20 and Lawson on +17, the theme after Spa is volatility in the chasing group rather than a settled order — and that’s before even considering how quickly a single big recovery, like Hadjar’s 21st-to-6th, can reorder the table.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Isack Hadjar | Red Bull | 18 | 3 | +15 | +15 |
| Lando Norris | McLaren | 13 | 5 | +8 | +11 |
| Arvid Lindblad | RB F1 Team | 11 | 15 | -4 | +4 |
Verstappen’s +20 lead survives Spa, but Hadjar’s jump to +15 compresses the fight behind: Lawson is only three positions ahead, and the gap from first to third is down to five — with the top 10 now shifting race by race.