Round 13 at Monza flipped the top of the 2026 ‘Most positions gained’ table, with Liam Lawson’s latest climb pushing him past Max Verstappen. Behind them, Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s extraordinary 19th-to-1st surge reshaped the top 10 of the season-long movement ranking.
By Diego Torres
The Italian Grand Prix has produced a new leader in the season-long ‘Most positions gained’ ranking: Liam Lawson. Lawson moved from second to first on +27, overtaking previous leader Max Verstappen, now second on +24, as Red Bull continues to dominate this particular measure of recovery across the 2026 season.
Lawson’s Monza Sunday was built around pure ground-making: he started 22nd and finished 14th, a gain of eight positions across 53 laps. It wasn’t a points finish, but this ranking is designed to capture something different — the cumulative value of climbing from where you start — and those eight places were enough to swing the lead at the top after 13 races completed.
The headline isn’t just that Lawson leads — it’s that the top three is now an entirely Red Bull story. Verstappen remains within three net positions of Lawson (+24 vs +27), while Isack Hadjar holds third on +18, making the top end of the ranking both compressed and team-concentrated.
That closeness matters, because it reduces the margin for quiet weekends. With only 13 rounds in the book, a single high-swing recovery can reorder first and second, exactly as Monza just demonstrated. Lawson didn’t need a podium to take control of this table; he needed places, and he banked them.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli delivered the biggest ranking shockwave of the weekend by surging from 20th to sixth in the season standings, a 14-place jump that is by far the largest change among the key movers. His season total now sits at +11 — and that climb was powered by one of the most extreme grid-to-flag reversals of the year at Monza.
Antonelli started 19th and finished first, taking 25 points after 53 laps. That single race swing of 18 places was the biggest grid-to-finish mover in the entire field in Italy, and it shows how one outlier Sunday can transform a cumulative metric: he went from being an also-ran in this ranking to sitting just outside the top five, with Lando Norris next in line on +15 in fourth.
Not everyone left Monza with their season narrative improved. Pierre Gasly’s movement in the table went in the opposite direction: he dropped six places from 13th to 19th and sits on just +1 for the season. The irony is sharp in a ranking about recovery, because Gasly’s Italian Grand Prix began from the very front — he started first and finished seventh, scoring six points — leaving him with a net loss of six positions in the race itself rather than a gain.
Franco Colapinto also slipped backwards, falling from sixth to 10th in the season ranking despite still holding a respectable +9. And there was a notable name exiting the top 10 entirely: Lewis Hamilton dropped from 10th to 13th and now stands at +6, underlining how quickly the middle of this table can churn when a weekend doesn’t add much positive movement.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Andrea Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | 20 | 6 | +14 | +11 |
| Pierre Gasly | Alpine F1 Team | 13 | 19 | -6 | +1 |
| Franco Colapinto | Alpine F1 Team | 6 | 10 | -4 | +9 |
Lawson’s shift to +27 puts Verstappen on the defensive in a ranking where small margins can flip the lead, while Antonelli’s leap to sixth (+11) shows how one extreme recovery can redefine a season total. With Hamilton out of the top 10 and Colapinto slipping to 10th, the fight for the lower half of the top 10 looks volatile even as Red Bull controls the top three.