Round 4 in Miami reshaped the 2026 “Most positions gained” table: Charles Leclerc tumbled out of the top 10 while Oscar Piastri and Carlos Sainz made the biggest leaps upward. Max Verstappen still leads the season-long recovery chart on +14, with Liam Lawson next on +12.
By Nadia Okafor
The sharpest pivot after the Miami Grand Prix was Charles Leclerc’s collapse down the season ranking, a swing that underlines how unforgiving this metric is when a weekend turns into lost track position. Leclerc went from fifth to 16th overall on -3, and the Miami numbers show why: he started third and finished eighth, a net loss of five places across 57 laps that dragged his season total backwards and pushed him out of the top 10 altogether.
While Leclerc fell away, Oscar Piastri produced the kind of clean, measurable recovery this ranking rewards. From seventh on the grid to third at the flag, he banked +4 in Miami en route to a season total of +5 — and that was enough to catapult him from 10th to third in the standings. The contrast is stark: Piastri’s upward trend is now visible in both movement and ranking position, and it reshuffled the top three without touching the lead itself.
Up front, the headline remains that Max Verstappen continues to set the pace for season-long progress through the field: +14 after four races, and still the leader even after finishing fifth from second on the grid in Miami. Liam Lawson stays closest on +12, keeping the gap between first and second at just two places overall, but the bigger story is how quickly the chasing pack is compressing behind them as new names arrive at the sharp end.
Carlos Sainz provided the other major jump, climbing from 12th to fifth on +5 and joining Alexander Albon as a second Williams inside the top 10 at +5. That Williams double presence is part of what forced the exits — Sergio Pérez also dropped out of the top 10 — and it leaves several drivers clustered on similar totals, where a single +4 like Piastri’s Miami can rewrite the table.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | 5 | 16 | -11 | -3 |
| Oscar Piastri | McLaren | 10 | 3 | +7 | +5 |
| Carlos Sainz | Williams | 12 | 5 | +7 | +5 |
Verstappen’s +14 lead holds, but Lawson is only two places back on +12 and the pack behind is tightening: Piastri’s move to third on +5 and Sainz’s rise to fifth on +5 show how one strong recovery weekend can flip the order — while a net loss like Leclerc’s can erase top-10 status quickly.