Ten races into 2026, Liam Lawson remains the benchmark for turning Saturdays into Sundays, holding P1 on +3.80. But the Belgian Grand Prix has reshuffled the chase behind him, most starkly with Lando Norris sliding from 10th to 16th.
By Julian Reyes
The headline after Spa isn’t a change at the top, but a sharp drop among the established names behind it. Liam Lawson stays P1 in the ‘Biggest improvement vs qualifying’ ranking on +3.80, and the top three is unchanged with Esteban Ocon second on +3.75 and Sergio Pérez third on +3.67. That stability matters, because this metric is a slow-burn test of repeatability: it averages qualifying position minus race classification position across classified races, and with 10 rounds completed there are enough weekends in the sample for patterns to harden into reputations.
Instead, the most important movement comes from Lando Norris, who falls six places from 10th to 16th. His value is now just +0.14, a collapse that reads like a warning sign in a ranking built specifically to reward drivers who routinely finish better than they qualify. Spa underlined the tension: Norris qualified 3rd but was classified 7th, the kind of swing that drags down an average designed to capture positive Sunday ‘recovery’ rather than negative slippage.
Lawson’s own Belgian weekend shows why this ranking can be counterintuitive if you only glance at the race result. He qualified 11th and finished 12th, so Spa itself was not a big ‘improver’ event for him — yet his season-long average remains the best in the field at +3.80, extending a streaky sense that his earlier rounds have done the heavy lifting.
The margins at the front are narrow enough that one or two ‘wrong-direction’ Sundays can have outsized consequences. Lawson’s +3.80 advantage over Ocon’s +3.75 is just 0.05, while Pérez sits only 0.13 further back on +3.67. In other words, the top three is intact after Belgium, but it’s not comfortable; it’s a three-way knife edge where holding position week-to-week can be as important as making gains.
That closeness reframes what happened lower down: while Norris’ fall was dramatic, it also shows how quickly the chasing pack can be reshaped when a driver stops converting qualifying into better race classifications. With this methodology using qualifying position rather than the starting grid, it’s also insulated from grid-penalty noise — so the swings you see are directly tied to how each weekend’s qualifying ranking translates to a classified finish.
Spa produced a meaningful top-10 reshuffle. Alexander Albon (Williams) is now 4th on +3.33, Oliver Bearman (Haas F1 Team) 5th on +3.00, and Carlos Sainz (Williams) enters in 9th on +1.33. Even without an explicit ‘gainer’ flag, that trio’s presence as new top-10 entrants signals a shift in who is consistently outperforming their qualifying baseline across the classified races that count.
The exits are just as telling: Max Verstappen, Gabriel Bortoleto and Norris are all out of the top 10 after the Belgian Grand Prix. For Norris, the story is clear in the ranking movement and value — down to 16th at +0.14. For Verstappen, the drop aligns with a broader slide that also shows up in the movers list, pushing him outside the top-10 group despite still carrying a positive season average.
Norris isn’t the only driver to lose ground. Arvid Lindblad drops four places from 6th to 10th, settling on +1.25 for RB F1 Team — still inside the top 10, but now clinging to its bottom edge rather than sitting comfortably in the upper half. Verstappen also falls four places, from 8th to 12th, landing on +1.00 for Red Bull and joining the list of top-10 exits.
Put together, those moves change the shape of the ranking’s ‘middle’: the top remains locked, but the buffer behind it is thinner and more volatile. With a minimum of three classified race weekends required to appear, this table naturally filters for drivers with enough completed mileage to reveal their Sunday conversion rate — meaning the next few rounds are less about new names arriving and more about whether established ones can arrest or reverse these kinds of slides.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lando Norris | McLaren | 10 | 16 | -6 | +0.14 |
| Arvid Lindblad | RB F1 Team | 6 | 10 | -4 | +1.25 |
| Max Verstappen | Red Bull | 8 | 12 | -4 | +1.00 |
Lawson hasn’t had to ‘win’ Spa to keep control of this ranking — consistency elsewhere is still carrying his +3.80 lead. But with Ocon only 0.05 behind and Pérez 0.13 back, the top can flip quickly if any of them post a weekend that goes against the metric. Further down, Norris’ drop to 16th and Verstappen’s slide to 12th open the door for the new top-10 entrants to consolidate their places rather than merely cameo in the group.