After the Japanese Grand Prix, Nico Hülkenberg’s climb from fourth to first reshapes the ‘Most overtakes’ ranking, nudging Max Verstappen into second by the tightest of margins.
By Camille Fontaine
The Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka produced a change at the top of the 2026 ‘Most overtakes’ table, with Nico Hülkenberg moving from fourth to first. His season total now stands at 23, enough to depose the previous leader Max Verstappen, who drops to second on 22.
That one-overtake gap matters because it reframes the early-season picture after three races completed: Verstappen is no longer the benchmark for volume passing, and Audi now has the driver setting the pace in this specific metric. It’s also a reminder of what this ranking is measuring — genuine lap-to-lap position gains, separated from pit-stop shuffles unless the strategic gain sticks to the flag — so the lead is built on changes that persisted, not temporary sequencing.
Close enough that one strong race can reorder the front. Liam Lawson holds third with 19, putting him within four of Verstappen and still within sight of the lead at 23. With only three rounds in the book, the top three already shows meaningful churn: the leader changed, and the top three changed.
What stands out is how compressed the front remains despite the headline swap. Hülkenberg’s advantage is one over Verstappen, while Verstappen’s cushion over Lawson is three. In a ranking where movement is driven by discrete, countable passes, those are small margins — and they increase the value of consistency week-to-week more than a single spike.
The biggest movers were defined by rank change rather than a runaway total. Hülkenberg’s +3 (fourth to first) was matched by George Russell and Isack Hadjar, each up three places as well. Russell climbed from eighth to fifth and sits on 16 overtakes; Hadjar surged from 11th to eighth with 14.
Those gains underline how quickly the mid-pack of this table can reshuffle: a few added passes — whether achieved on track or via pit-strategy gains that held to the finish under the methodology — can swing multiple positions at once. For Russell, fifth on 16 puts him closer to the leading group than his previous eighth-place standing suggested; for Hadjar, entering the top 10 at eighth is the tangible reward for that three-place rise.
Suzuka also delivered a sharp reversal for Carlos Sainz, who suffered the biggest drop in the ranking: down five places from fifth to 10th, now on 13 overtakes for Williams. Franco Colapinto mirrored that fall, dropping five from sixth to 11th on 13 for Alpine F1 Team — a slide that takes him out of the top 10 entirely.
Pierre Gasly is the other notable exit, falling from 10th to 13th with 10, meaning Alpine has two drivers moving the wrong way in the space of one update. The on-track result snippets underline how unforgiving this metric can be: Hülkenberg finished 11th after starting 13th, while Sainz finished 15th from 16th. Those modest net gains on Sunday don’t preclude a driver from banking overtakes, but they do show that ranking movement is not simply the same as positions gained — it’s built from the accumulation of lap-to-lap passes and any strategic gains that stick.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carlos Sainz | Williams | 5 | 10 | -5 | 13 |
| Franco Colapinto | Alpine F1 Team | 6 | 11 | -5 | 13 |
| Nico Hülkenberg | Audi | 4 | 1 | +3 | 23 |
After three races, the ‘Most overtakes’ lead is a one-pass fight: Hülkenberg on 23 over Verstappen on 22, with Lawson third on 19. With margins this small, even a modest rank swing — like Russell to fifth on 16 or Hadjar into the top 10 on 14 — can quickly become pressure on the front, while Sainz and Colapinto dropping to 13 shows how easy it is to lose touch if others keep adding passes.