Austria didn’t change the top three in 2026’s best qualifying average, but it did reshape the fight immediately behind it: Charles Leclerc moved up to fourth as McLaren’s Lando Norris slipped to fifth.
By Diego Torres
Charles Leclerc is the key winner in the best qualifying average ranking after the Austrian Grand Prix, climbing from fifth to fourth with a 4.88 mean grid position. That single-place gain mattered because it came directly at the expense of Lando Norris, who dropped from fourth to fifth and now sits on a 5.25 average — a swing that highlights just how tight the second row of this table has become behind the established front-runners.
At the top, stability continues to be the story. Andrea Kimi Antonelli remains the clear benchmark on a remarkable 1.88 average, with Mercedes team-mate George Russell second on 2.38 and Lewis Hamilton third for Ferrari on 4.38. Austria offered a neat snapshot of Antonelli’s underlying consistency: he qualified fourth at the Red Bull Ring and converted that into third place and 15 points, reinforcing the sense of a season-long baseline rather than a one-off spike.
Further down, the Red Bull and McLaren subplots both nudged in the same direction: Max Verstappen rose from seventh to sixth with a 5.57 average, while Oscar Piastri slipped from sixth to seventh on 5.63, tightening that midfield-end of the top seven. And while the biggest movements were only single positions across the ranking, the bottom end still shifted too — Sergio Pérez moved up from 20th to 19th (19.38) as Fernando Alonso fell from 19th to 20th (19.63), illustrating how even small qualifying swings accumulate over eight completed races.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | 5 | 4 | +1 | 4.88 |
| Max Verstappen | Red Bull | 7 | 6 | +1 | 5.57 |
| Sergio Pérez | Cadillac F1 Team | 20 | 19 | +1 | 19.38 |
With the top three unchanged — Antonelli 1.88 ahead of Russell 2.38 and Hamilton 4.38 — the immediate battleground is now fourth. Leclerc’s move to 4.88 puts him between Hamilton and Norris (5.25), while Verstappen (5.57) and Piastri (5.63) remain separated by fine margins that can flip with just one more strong Saturday.