Lewis Hamilton’s Barcelona win coincided with a change at the top of the Momentum ranking, edging Isack Hadjar in a tight fight for best recent form. At the other end, Andrea Kimi Antonelli suffered the ranking’s biggest swing of the season so far.
By Diego Torres
The Momentum ranking’s headline after the Barcelona Grand Prix is a new leader: Lewis Hamilton. Ferrari’s Barcelona winner moves from fourth to first with a +9.58 score, narrowly displacing previous leader Isack Hadjar, now second on +9.00. With the ranking built on how much a driver’s last-three-round points rate has accelerated versus their earlier-season baseline, that 0.58 gap underlines just how close the fight is for “hottest form” as the season reaches seven races completed.
The sharpest reversal belongs to Andrea Kimi Antonelli. The Mercedes driver drops 14 places, from sixth to 20th, and ends up with a −6.58 Momentum value — the largest movement magnitude in this update. Barcelona was a 0-point race for Antonelli, classified Retired after starting third and being placed 16th; in a metric designed to measure current scoring speed, that kind of weekend turns a short-term trend into an immediate collapse.
Oscar Piastri also exits the top 10, sliding 12 positions from fifth to 17th with a −1.58 value for McLaren. Meanwhile Pierre Gasly’s trajectory goes the other way: Alpine’s Gasly surges from ninth to third, a six-place gain to +4.58, helped by a Barcelona points finish of 6 from 14th on the grid to seventh at the flag. The contrast inside Alpine is striking too, as Franco Colapinto drops from third to seventh despite still carrying a positive +1.25 Momentum score — a reminder that the ranking is about relative acceleration, not just whether you’re scoring at all.
There are smaller but meaningful shifts around the top 10 cut line as well. Esteban Ocon (Haas) arrives ninth on +0.42 and Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) is 10th on +0.33, while Piastri and Antonelli are the two names to fall out. With Hadjar still only 0.58 behind Hamilton at the top, and Gasly now in the mix, the next updates won’t require dramatic swings to reshuffle the podium positions of form.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Andrea Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | 6 | 20 | -14 | −6.58 |
| Oscar Piastri | McLaren | 5 | 17 | -12 | −1.58 |
| Pierre Gasly | Alpine F1 Team | 9 | 3 | +6 | +4.58 |
Hamilton’s +9.58 puts him in front of Hadjar by just 0.58 in the form race, so the lead is established but far from secure. Antonelli’s plunge to 20th and Piastri’s drop to 17th reshape the top-10 picture, while Gasly’s rise to third makes the chase behind the top two tighter than it was heading into Barcelona.