Lewis Hamilton’s Canadian GP drive from fifth on Saturday to second on Sunday lifted him to the top of 2026’s biggest improvement vs qualifying ranking. The lead change comes as George Russell’s retirement drags him sharply backwards and Lando Norris slips to second.
By Camille Fontaine
The Canadian Grand Prix has rewritten the top of the 2026 ‘Biggest improvement vs qualifying’ table, with Lewis Hamilton moving from second to first after Montreal. Hamilton’s average improvement now stands at +1.20, overtaking previous leader Lando Norris, and the timing is telling: a single cleanly positive weekend can swing this metric early in a season, especially with only five races completed and the ranking counting only classified finishes with both qualifying and race results.
Hamilton’s own weekend is the cleanest illustration of what the ranking tries to capture. He qualified fifth at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve and was classified second, banking a net gain of three positions in pure qualifying-to-finish terms, plus 18 points for Ferrari. With the methodology explicitly using qualifying position rather than grid, it isolates that underlying ‘race outcome vs Saturday baseline’ effect — and Hamilton’s new +1.20 season mean is now the benchmark others have to beat.
Behind him, the story is how quickly a bad Sunday can knock a driver off course in this specific table. Norris drops from first to second despite still holding a strong +1.00, and he now shares that headline number with Max Verstappen in third. The biggest hit belongs to George Russell: from pole position in qualifying to a retirement after 29 laps leaves him classified as retired with 0 points, and the damage shows up immediately as a fall from fourth to sixth and a season average that’s now negative at −0.25 — a reminder that this ranking punishes non-classified races by excluding them, but once you are classified as retired, the resulting classification can swing the mean hard.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| George Russell | Mercedes | 4 | 6 | -2 | −0.25 |
| Lewis Hamilton | Ferrari | 2 | 1 | +1 | +1.20 |
| Lando Norris | McLaren | 1 | 2 | -1 | +1.00 |
With five races done, Hamilton’s +1.20 puts him in control of a ranking that can flip quickly when a single weekend heavily outperforms (or underperforms) qualifying. Norris at +1.00 and Verstappen at +1.00 keep the fight tight at the top, while Russell’s slide to −0.25 shows how costly a poor classification can be for season-long consistency in this metric.