Liam Lawson’s recovery from 12th on the grid to seventh in Montreal added 6 more points from outside the top 10, lifting him past Max Verstappen at the top of this ranking.
By Nadia Okafor
Liam Lawson is the new leader of the 2026 ‘Points from outside the top 10’ ranking after the Canadian Grand Prix, with 14 points scored in races where he started 11th or lower (or from the pit lane). The lead changed hands in Montreal: Lawson moved from second to first, while previous leader Max Verstappen dropped to second.
The swing was driven by the kind of Sunday this metric is designed to capture. Lawson started 12th at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve and finished seventh, a five-place gain that turned a compromised grid slot into 6 points. In a ranking where every point is “earned the hard way”, adding a meaningful haul from P12 matters more than marginal reshuffles at the front of the grid.
Verstappen’s own Canadian GP points did not contribute to this particular table, because his start was sixth. He still sits on 12 points in the metric from earlier rounds, but Lawson’s Montreal climb has edged him ahead, 14 to 12, in what is becoming a tight two-driver battle at the top.
This ranking rewards the rare combination of a poor start position and a points finish, so the gap between grid and chequered flag is the story. Lawson’s Canada weekend delivered it cleanly: 12th on the grid, seventh at the finish, 67 laps completed, classified as lapped, and 6 points added to his outside-top-10 tally.
Those 6 points didn’t just pad the total; they flipped the order at the top. Lawson’s 14-point sum now sets the benchmark for the season through five races completed, highlighting that his points contribution from “non-ideal” starting slots is currently more productive than anyone else’s.
The margin is slender: 2 points separate Lawson (14) and Verstappen (12). That tightness underlines how sensitive this ranking is to a single recovery drive from outside the top 10 — and how quickly the lead can change with only one race’s worth of opportunity.
Verstappen’s Canadian GP was strong in conventional terms: he started sixth and finished third over 68 laps for 15 points. But that performance is almost a counter-example for this metric. It shows the limitation and the purpose of the ranking: it doesn’t measure overall pace or season points, it isolates a specific skill set — converting disadvantaged grid positions into championship points.
Oliver Bearman remains third with 7 points, keeping the top three unchanged even as the lead swapped. That stability matters: it suggests the early shape of the table is holding, even if first place is now contested more directly.
Further down, the only movements were small but telling. Isack Hadjar climbed from 10th to ninth for Red Bull despite still showing 0 points in this metric, while Arvid Lindblad slipped from ninth to 10th, also on 0, for RB F1 Team. With the maximum movement magnitude only one place and no top-10 entrants or exits, Montreal was a precision shift at the very top rather than a broad reshuffle through the field.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Liam Lawson | RB F1 Team | 2 | 1 | +1 | 14 |
| Isack Hadjar | Red Bull | 10 | 9 | +1 | 0 |
| Max Verstappen | Red Bull | 1 | 2 | -1 | 12 |
With only 2 points between Lawson (14) and Verstappen (12), the lead of this ranking is now highly sensitive to any race where either starts 11th or lower — one conversion drive can swing it again.