Liam Lawson’s steady Barcelona result is enough to lift him to second on 67.5, closing the gap to Max Verstappen’s 70.6 at the top. Andrea Kimi Antonelli drops to third after a retirement from P3 on the grid.
By Camille Fontaine
The headline move after the Barcelona Grand Prix is Liam Lawson edging up to second in the 2026 power ranking, jumping from P3 to P2 on a 67.5 composite score. In a table built from results alone, that kind of incremental rise matters because it comes at the top end: Max Verstappen remains P1 on 70.6, so Lawson’s promotion sharpens the picture of who is actually applying pressure across qualifying and race outcomes rather than merely landing one standout weekend.
Barcelona underlined why this ranking can pivot even when the movement magnitude is only 1. Verstappen’s weekend produced a clean set of results to feed the model — P5 in qualifying and P4 in the race, banking 12 points — and it keeps the lead intact. Lawson, meanwhile, matched his own baseline with P8 in qualifying and P8 in the race for 4 points, but the composite weighting (40% teammate head-to-head, 30% grid-to-finish, 20% consistency/reliability, 10% average qualifying position) rewards accumulation and stability over seven races as much as peak moments, and that’s been enough to reshuffle the order directly behind the leader.
The counter-story is Antonelli’s slip from P2 to P3 despite still holding a strong 60.0. A retirement after qualifying P3 and starting P3, ending up classified P16 with zero points, lands directly in the parts of this system that punish weekends that don’t convert into classified results. Further down, Lando Norris is the other upward nudge, moving from P8 to P7 on 44.2, while Charles Leclerc slides the other way from P7 to P8 on 38.6 — small changes, but they reinforce that, after seven rounds, this is a tightly packed midfield of scores where one weekend’s swing can redraw the order.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Liam Lawson | RB F1 Team | 3 | 2 | +1 | 67.5 |
| Lando Norris | McLaren | 8 | 7 | +1 | 44.2 |
| Andrea Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | 2 | 3 | -1 | 60.0 |
Verstappen’s 70.6 lead survives round 7, but Lawson’s rise to 67.5 brings the fight for P2 right up behind him. Antonelli’s drop to third shows how quickly a single non-classified outcome can bite in a results-only composite, while the Norris/Leclerc swap hints at more churn to come in the closely grouped mid-pack scores.