The Italian Grand Prix reshuffled the top of the Best average positions gained table, with Liam Lawson edging past Sergio Pérez on average grid-to-finish progress. Big swings for Pierre Gasly and Andrea Kimi Antonelli show how brutally this metric reacts to weekends that defy a driver’s “normal” starting position.
By Nadia Okafor
The lead has changed hands at Monza: Liam Lawson now tops the Best average positions gained ranking on +3.86, overtaking previous leader Sergio Pérez (+3.67). It’s a small numerical gap, but the significance is obvious in a table built on consistency: a few places per Sunday, averaged out, is enough to flip the order after 13 completed races.
Lawson’s jump was powered by an extreme weekend in official grid terms. He started 22nd at the Italian Grand Prix and finished 14th, an eight-place recovery in the classification that acts like a cheat code for an “average positions gained” metric. That single Sunday has pushed him from 3rd to 1st in the ranking (up two places), and it also explains why this metric can tell a different story to qualifying headlines: he qualified 14th, but it is the official grid slot that matters here.
Monza didn’t change the identity of the top three, but it did sharpen the picture. Lawson (+3.86) now leads Pérez (+3.67), with Esteban Ocon still 3rd on +3.25. The gaps are not enormous: Lawson’s edge over Pérez is measured in tenths of a position per race, while Ocon remains within reach if the next few rounds produce another big recovery drive.
That tension is the point of this ranking’s methodology: it averages “grid position minus final classification” only for classified races where the driver had a proper grid slot, and it explicitly bakes in grid penalties via the official starting grid. With a minimum of three counted races required, there’s no padding the table with one-off heroics; to stay at the front you need a repeating pattern of gaining ground across Sundays.
Pierre Gasly’s weekend illustrates the downside as starkly as Lawson’s shows the upside. From pole (grid 1) to finishing 7th, Gasly shed six places on the day, and the cumulative effect was severe: he drops seven places in this ranking, from 10th to 17th, with his season average now just +0.17. In a metric that rewards “net forward movement,” a pole that turns into a finish outside the top six is particularly damaging because there is nowhere to go but backwards.
At the other extreme, Andrea Kimi Antonelli produced the kind of outlier that can reshape a mid-table season profile. He started 19th and won, swinging 18 places in one classified result and scoring 25 points. Even with the minimum-race filter and averaging smoothing the peaks, that type of day still moves the needle: Antonelli climbs six spots in this ranking, from 18th to 12th, now sitting on a +0.92 average.
The top-10 bubble moved as well. Lando Norris is now 8th on +1.50 and is one of the biggest gainers in position within the ranking itself, climbing four places from 12th. Arvid Lindblad sits 10th on +1.20, but the notable story is at the other end: Oliver Bearman and Gasly are the two names to exit the top 10 after Monza.
Bearman’s slide was steep enough to be a season marker rather than noise. He drops from 9th to 14th (down five) despite still showing a positive average of +0.50, a reminder that in the midfield of this metric small differences in average movement can mean multiple ranking places. Carlos Sainz also moved backward, from 5th to 7th, even while holding a still-strong +2.00 — suggesting the threshold for “top-five level” average gains is rising as the season matures.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pierre Gasly | Alpine F1 Team | 10 | 17 | -7 | +0.17 |
| Andrea Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | 18 | 12 | +6 | +0.92 |
| Oliver Bearman | Haas F1 Team | 9 | 14 | -5 | +0.50 |
Lawson’s takeover at +3.86 reframes the fight at the top as a margin game: Pérez is only at +3.67, and Ocon’s +3.25 remains close enough that one more big grid-to-flag recovery could compress the top three again. Lower down, Gasly’s fall to 17th (+0.17) and Bearman’s drop to 14th (+0.50) underline how quickly a single pole-to-P7 or top-10-level slide can undo months of incremental gains, while Norris (8th, +1.50) and Antonelli (12th, +0.92) have positioned themselves as the next drivers to attack the top-10 threshold.