After 11 rounds, Liam Lawson remains the benchmark for scoring when starting 11th or lower, adding 4 more points at the Hungaroring. Behind him, the fight is tight: Max Verstappen and Pierre Gasly are level on 12.
By Diego Torres
Liam Lawson still leads the 2026 ‘Points from outside the top 10’ ranking after the Hungarian Grand Prix, and he did it the way this metric rewards most: by turning a compromised grid slot into tangible points. Starting 11th in Budapest, the RB F1 Team driver finished 8th for 4 points, taking his season tally in this category to 18. The headline isn’t a reshuffle at the top — leaderChanged is false and the top three is unchanged — but the steady accumulation that keeps Lawson out in front.
That Hungary result also underlines the ranking’s core story: the gap between where a driver begins and where he ends up when points are on offer. Lawson’s 11th-to-8th climb is a three-place gain that mattered, because it converted an outside-top-10 start into a points finish. With 11 races completed, those ‘salvage’ afternoons are becoming a repeatable pattern rather than a one-off spike — and the streak signal suggests this theme is persisting across rounds.
Close enough that one more Lawson-style recovery could reframe the picture — but not so close that his rivals can ignore the ground already conceded. Max Verstappen sits second on 12 points and Pierre Gasly is third on 12 as well, leaving them six points back from Lawson’s 18. Because ties here are broken by total season points and then alphabetically, the fact Verstappen and Gasly are locked together on the same value highlights how little separation exists in the ‘best of the rest’ group behind the leader.
The Hungarian Grand Prix didn’t change that top-three order, which matters in itself: stability can be a form of momentum in a ranking built on opportunism. If Lawson can keep banking points from starts of 11th or lower, the pressure shifts onto Verstappen and Gasly to produce their own conversion races — not just occasional points, but points that come specifically when the grid position is already against them.
Lawson’s 11th-to-8th drive was the clearest example of the ranking’s logic in action, but the weekend also offered a contrasting case study in how marginal the gains can be at the cutoff. Nico Hülkenberg finished 9th for 2 points, but he started 10th — which means it does not count toward this particular ranking, because only starts from 11th or lower qualify. That fine line is the difference between a recovery story that changes the table and one that does not, even if both end with points on the board.
At the other end, Lance Stroll’s race showed the risk when a deep starting position doesn’t translate into a points finish. He started 20th and finished 13th, a seven-place gain that looks impressive in isolation, but it delivered 0 points and therefore 0 added value in this metric. In a ranking defined by turning poor grid slots into points, Hungary reinforced the uncomfortable truth: big position gains are only ‘rankings’ gains if they reach the top 10 at the flag.
The only movement after Budapest was at the lower end: Hülkenberg rose from 15th to 14th for Audi, while Stroll dropped from 14th to 15th for Aston Martin — both still sitting on 0 in the value column. With a maximum movement magnitude of just 1 and no top-10 entrants or exits listed, this was a round where the table’s structure held and the bigger story was consolidation rather than volatility.
That’s also a reminder that this ranking is selective by design. Drivers only appear if they have at least one start outside the top 10, and points only count from those specific races. Hungary produced an on-theme score for the leader — Lawson’s 4 — but not the kind of widespread outside-top-10 points wave that would reorder the standings. As the season reaches 11 races, the gap at the front is being built less by dramatic swings and more by repeated, measurable conversions from 11th or worse into top-10 finishes.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nico Hülkenberg | Audi | 15 | 14 | +1 | 0 |
| Lance Stroll | Aston Martin | 14 | 15 | -1 | 0 |
Lawson’s 18-point lead in this metric is being reinforced by repeatable conversions like 11th-to-8th in Hungary, while Verstappen and Gasly remain within striking distance on 12 — but only if they can add points specifically from starts outside the top 10. With minimal movement elsewhere and several drivers stuck on 0, the ranking is increasingly shaped by who can consistently turn ‘bad grids’ into top-10 finishes, not just who can climb places.