The Monaco Grand Prix reshuffled the recovery ranking at both ends: Liam Lawson’s steady climb kept him ahead of Max Verstappen, while George Russell’s slide pushed him from sixth to 11th.
By Nadia Okafor
Liam Lawson is the new leader of 2026’s “Best average positions gained” ranking after the Monaco Grand Prix, turning a clean, measurable recovery into a change at the very top. Starting 10th and finishing sixth across 78 laps, Lawson banked another four-place gain that keeps his season average at +5.33 — enough to dislodge the previous leader Max Verstappen, now second on +4.25, and underline how consistently Lawson has been moving forward from his grid slots rather than simply holding station.
That shift at the front came with churn deeper in the order, and Monaco was particularly costly for Mercedes in this metric. George Russell not only recorded a backward weekend in grid-to-flag terms — sixth on the grid to 12th at the finish, a six-place loss — but it also pulled his season average down to −1.40 and dumped him five places in the table (sixth to 11th), taking him out of the top 10 entirely. Andrea Kimi Antonelli also slid sharply in the ranking, dropping four spots from fourth to eighth despite still holding a marginally positive average of +0.17, a reminder that the middle of this list is sensitive to even small shifts in net race-by-race movement.
Lewis Hamilton’s drop was smaller in position but notable in context: from second to fifth overall, down three places, with a +1.17 average that now looks more like consolidation than contention for the lead. Behind the headline change, the top three now reads Lawson (+5.33), Verstappen (+4.25) and Oscar Piastri (+2.33), with Pierre Gasly also on +2.33; that tie at +2.33 shows how quickly the podium of this ranking can tighten when the leader is built on repeated big recoveries rather than a single outlier drive.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| George Russell | Mercedes | 6 | 11 | -5 | −1.40 |
| Andrea Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | 4 | 8 | -4 | +0.17 |
| Lewis Hamilton | Ferrari | 2 | 5 | -3 | +1.17 |
Lawson’s takeover at +5.33 reframes the benchmark for race-day recovery, while Verstappen’s +4.25 keeps the lead battle live. Russell’s plunge to 11th and −1.40 is the bigger warning sign: one more weekend of losing positions will make climbing back into the top 10 a tougher, longer job.