Arvid Lindblad’s Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia turnaround has flipped the 2026 Best average positions gained ranking, edging Sergio Pérez as the season’s most consistent grid-to-flag improver. Carlos Sainz’s Sepang slide, meanwhile, has pushed him out of the top 10 altogether.
By Camille Fontaine
Arvid Lindblad is the new leader of the 2026 Best average positions gained ranking after a Sepang drive that was built on raw grid-to-finish recovery. Starting 22nd and finishing 10th, Lindblad made up 12 places in classified terms — the biggest grid-to-finish gain of the race — and it has rewritten the season-long picture in this metric, lifting him from eighth to first with a +3.71 average gain per counted race.
The margin at the top is tight enough to underline how quickly this ranking can swing with one standout comeback. Sergio Pérez, last round’s leader, now sits second on +3.60 for Cadillac F1 Team, only 0.11 behind Lindblad. Esteban Ocon remains in the mix as well: his +3.33 average is good enough for third for Haas F1 Team, keeping the top three compressed and highly sensitive to any future outlier races.
This ranking is unforgivingly literal: it averages grid position minus finishing position across counted races, and it uses the official starting grid — meaning anything that pushes a car back on Sunday counts against the driver. Lindblad’s Sepang number is therefore especially powerful because it didn’t rely on a marginal gain from a good grid slot; it was a 22nd-to-10th climb across 55 laps, with one point as a by-product rather than the story.
That’s why Lindblad’s move is so emphatic in the standings: a 7-place jump in the ranking itself (8th to 1st) is what a single extreme recovery can do when the table is bunched. It also resets the internal tension for the rest of the year: Pérez’s +3.60 is still within touching distance, and Ocon’s +3.33 keeps third place close enough that the podium order in this metric isn’t settled despite Lindblad’s headline-grabbing surge.
The counter-story to Lindblad’s rise is Carlos Sainz’s drop. Sainz went into the weekend ranked sixth, but a race that ran in reverse — 13th on the grid to 17th at the flag — has dragged his season average to +1.33 and knocked him down five positions to 11th for Williams. In a ranking that rewards consistent recovery, losing four places in one race is doubly damaging: it hurts the weekend’s score and dilutes the season-long average at the same time.
That fall had a direct knock-on effect on the top 10. Sainz is the name that exits the top 10 after round 16, a reminder that mid-table places in this metric are volatile and often decided by one bad Sunday rather than a long trend.
Franco Colapinto is the clearest beneficiary of the shifting pack: he has entered the top 10 in eighth for Alpine F1 Team on +2.38, rising three spots from 11th. That’s the kind of incremental climb that becomes possible when the drivers around him trade big swings — and it keeps the fight for the final top-10 places open as the season deepens past 16 completed races.
Lower down, the directional signals are just as stark. Gabriel Bortoleto has tumbled four positions from 13th to 17th for Audi, and his value display has flipped to −0.43, meaning he is, on average, losing positions relative to his grid slots in counted races. Pierre Gasly has slipped three spots to 19th with −0.86 for Alpine F1 Team, while Oliver Bearman has inched upward from 14th to 12th for Haas F1 Team on +0.83 — not a headline figure, but the sort of slow improvement that can matter if the midfield continues to churn.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arvid Lindblad | RB F1 Team | 8 | 1 | +7 | +3.71 |
| Carlos Sainz | Williams | 6 | 11 | -5 | +1.33 |
| Gabriel Bortoleto | Audi | 13 | 17 | -4 | −0.43 |
Lindblad’s +3.71 doesn’t create a runaway; it creates a new reference point. With Pérez only 0.11 behind on +3.60 and Ocon close on +3.33, the top of this grid-to-finish ranking is now defined by fine margins — and the next big recovery (or big loss) could reshuffle the order again as quickly as Sepang just did.