The Belgian Grand Prix didn’t change the top three, but it did sharpen the story beneath it: Lando Norris fell two places, while Sergio Pérez suffered the biggest drop of the week. With consistency measured only in classified finishes, one retirement can still distort the picture by removing a datapoint entirely.
By Camille Fontaine
Andrea Kimi Antonelli remains the benchmark in the 2026 Most consistent drivers ranking after Spa, holding P1 with a 2.89 mean finishing position from classified races. His Belgian Grand Prix weekend read like a ranking-protector: pole (qualifying P1), P1 from the front of the grid, 25 points, and a “Finished” status after 44 laps. The lead didn’t change, and neither did the top three, but the stability at the front only throws the mid-pack volatility into sharper relief.
The closest pressure still comes from inside Mercedes. George Russell stays second on 3.50, and the intra-team gap remains meaningful: Antonelli’s 2.89 versus Russell’s 3.50 is a sizable separation in a metric where every tenth is earned through routinely avoiding mediocre classified results. Lewis Hamilton holds third for Ferrari on 3.60, close enough to Russell to keep the fight for P2 in play, but not close enough to downplay how insulated Antonelli currently looks.
The biggest “consistency” headline from Spa wasn’t a reshuffle at the front, but the way the metric treats outcomes. This ranking counts only classified races and excludes DNFs entirely, so the Belgian Grand Prix’s standout non-finish in the data — Sergio Pérez classified as “Retired” after 13 laps — doesn’t directly worsen his average finish. Yet Pérez still recorded the largest movement: down four spots from 15th to 19th, now sitting on a 15.33 mean classified finish, a reminder that missing classified results can leave a driver’s season profile exposed to being overtaken by rivals who simply keep banking finishes.
Up front, Spa’s key results reinforced why the top stays static. Antonelli converted pole into victory and another clean “Finished,” while Charles Leclerc’s P2 (18 points) from P4 on the grid and a qualifying position of 5 helped him edge upward in the ranking. But none of that was enough to dislodge the top-three order, underlining that after 10 races completed, the front of this particular table is being decided by accumulation — and the lack of setbacks — as much as by peaks.
Leclerc was the clearest winner among the notable movers: up one place from fifth to fourth with a 4.13 average classified finish. Spa added another high finish to his file, and in a ranking where “good enough” results can weigh heavily, a second place is a powerful stabiliser. It also adds an extra Ferrari subplot behind Hamilton’s third place overall in this metric: the team now has drivers occupying both third (3.60) and fourth (4.13), giving it breadth in consistency even without changing the podium positions in the ranking itself.
Red Bull also had small-but-telling progress. Max Verstappen climbed from sixth to fifth on 4.43, and Isack Hadjar rose from ninth to eighth on 6.83. Neither move is dramatic in isolation, but together they hint at a tightening cluster behind the Mercedes-Ferrari front line — the kind of cluster where one average classified finish can swing multiple ranking positions when the numbers are compressed.
Lando Norris’s drop is the one that bites in the top end of the table. He fell two places from fourth to sixth, now on a 4.71 mean classified finish. That’s not a collapse, but it is a loss of momentum in a ranking built on minimizing off-days: at this end, moving from fourth to sixth is effectively conceding ground in a tightly fought tier behind the leaders, especially when Ferrari and Red Bull are creeping upward.
Behind him, Esteban Ocon slid three places from 13th to 16th on 12.25, and Pérez’s four-place fall to 19th leaves him with the week’s worst headline movement. For both, the message is less about one Sunday and more about the broader arithmetic of this methodology: if you’re not piling up classified finishes that are at least respectable, the field can pass you even when a retirement is excluded — because others are simply adding more classified results to their averages. The streak signal remaining true after Spa suggests the broader pattern continues: the consistency story is being written through sustained, incremental change rather than one-off swings at the top.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sergio Pérez | Cadillac F1 Team | 15 | 19 | -4 | 15.33 |
| Esteban Ocon | Haas F1 Team | 13 | 16 | -3 | 12.25 |
| Lando Norris | McLaren | 4 | 6 | -2 | 4.71 |
Antonelli’s 2.89 and another “Finished” win at Spa keeps him firmly in control of the consistency leaderboard, while the unchanged top three highlights how hard it is to dislodge drivers who keep stacking classified results. The more immediate tension is behind them: Norris’s drop to sixth (4.71) opens space for Ferrari and Red Bull to close in, and Pérez’s plunge to 19th shows how quickly the table can move against drivers who aren’t adding stable classified finishes.