The Belgian Grand Prix flips the 2026 Momentum ranking on its head: Charles Leclerc jumps from 10th to 1st on a +7.38 surge, while former top-five runner Lewis Hamilton tumbles to 20th on −2.52.
By Diego Torres
Charles Leclerc is the new leader of 2026’s Momentum ranking after Spa, and the swing is as dramatic as this metric gets. Leclerc vaults from 10th to 1st with a +7.38 score, meaning his average points-per-race over the most recent three rounds is 7.38 higher than his average across every earlier round this season.
That leap also triggers a change at the very top: the previous leader was George Russell, but Spa ends with Leclerc holding the No.1 spot and Ferrari locking out the biggest headline in both directions. While Leclerc accelerates, Lewis Hamilton’s ranking collapses from 5th to 20th — the largest move in either direction at 15 positions — leaving him with a −2.52 momentum figure and underlining how sharply this form-based table can pivot over just three races.
Leclerc’s new advantage is sizeable in a ranking designed to compress gaps: Max Verstappen sits 2nd on +4.00 and Isack Hadjar is 3rd on +3.81. That keeps the top three clearly positive — all three are scoring faster now than earlier in the year — but Leclerc has separated himself with nearly double Verstappen’s uplift and an even larger margin to Hadjar.
The broader signal is that Spa didn’t just reshuffle the leader; it changed the top three altogether. With only 10 races completed and this ranking requiring a three-round “recent” sample against an earlier baseline, the table is now deep into the season phase where genuine trendlines can start to form — and where a single weekend can still redraw the hierarchy.
Spa offered a neat reminder that this is not a finishing-position table, but a comparison of scoring rates over time. Leclerc banked 18 points for 2nd place after starting 4th (qualifying 5th) in a 44-lap race, and his Momentum ranking reacts by launching him from the edge of the top 10 straight to the top overall.
Hamilton, though, still scored: he finished 4th for 12 points after starting 5th (qualifying 6th), also completing 44 laps. Yet the Momentum metric turns sharply against him, dropping him from 5th to 20th on −2.52. In other words, even with a points finish at Spa, his last three rounds have cooled relative to his earlier-season scoring level — and the ranking punishes that loss of pace against his own baseline.
Beyond the headline Ferrari split, Spa rearranged the edges of the top 10. Lance Stroll becomes a top-10 entrant at 8th, moving up three places from 11th, but his valueDisplay sits exactly at 0.00 — a telling illustration of how a driver can climb on relative movement around them even without improving their recent scoring rate versus earlier rounds. Nico Hülkenberg (9th) and Sergio Pérez (10th) also sit on 0.00, making the lower top 10 a tight cluster where tiny shifts can flip the ordering.
There were notable exits too: Lewis Hamilton, Liam Lawson and Oscar Piastri drop out of the top 10 entirely. Lawson’s fall is less catastrophic than Hamilton’s but still significant: he slides from 7th to 14th with −0.38, a mild negative that nevertheless pushes him into the midfield of this table. Meanwhile Lando Norris is the odd case among the week’s biggest movers — down five places from 2nd to 7th despite still carrying a positive +0.43, showing how quickly the front can crowd when several drivers are improving at once.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lewis Hamilton | Ferrari | 5 | 20 | -15 | −2.52 |
| Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | 10 | 1 | +9 | +7.38 |
| Liam Lawson | RB F1 Team | 7 | 14 | -7 | −0.38 |
Spa turns the Momentum ranking into a story of separation at the top and volatility underneath: Leclerc’s +7.38 sets a new benchmark over Verstappen (+4.00) and Hadjar (+3.81), while Hamilton’s plunge to 20th shows how quickly recent scoring can fall behind an earlier-season baseline even when points still come in.