After Baku, the top of the 2026 most-overtakes table is unchanged — but the pressure underneath it is rising, with Antonelli jumping into the top five and Sainz back in the top 10.
By Camille Fontaine
Gabriel Bortoleto remains the reference point in the 2026 “most overtakes” ranking after round 15 in Baku, holding P1 on 81. The headline is stability at the very top — no leader change and no change in the top three — but it’s the kind of stability that invites scrutiny because the margin is thin and the chasing pack is clustered.
Max Verstappen and Nico Hülkenberg are still locked together on 78, sharing second and third on the same number. That leaves Bortoleto with a three-overtake cushion over two drivers at once, which is comfortable enough to protect him from one rival’s surge, but not enough to ignore the possibility of being boxed in if both keep adding at a similar rate.
The sharpest climb belongs to Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who gains three places to go from seventh to fourth with 74 overtakes. That’s a significant swing in a metric that tends to move in small increments once the sample size builds, and it matters because fourth is often the launching pad into the top-three fight: Antonelli is now four behind the Verstappen/Hülkenberg tie on 78, and seven off Bortoleto’s lead.
Carlos Sainz is the other eye-catching mover, also up three places, from 12th to ninth with 64. In a single update, Sainz flips his story from “outside looking in” to “back inside the top 10”, and the number is big enough to make him relevant to the next shake-up rather than merely a footnote on the table.
The most damaging drop is Pierre Gasly’s three-place slide from ninth to 12th, even though he still sits on 60 overtakes. That underlines how tight the mid-table has become: Gasly’s total is strong enough to look top-10 worthy in isolation, but the ranking punishes any loss of momentum because several drivers are piled into the same numerical neighbourhood.
Lando Norris also gives ground, down two places from 14th to 16th on 55, while George Russell slips one spot from fourth to fifth with 71. Russell’s case is the subtle one — 71 is a top-five-level total, yet Antonelli’s jump is enough to bump him down a rung and reshape the immediate pecking order behind the unchanged top three.
Baku produced a race in which grid position shifts were a visible theme, and Antonelli was the biggest mover in the classified order, gaining 11 places from 16th to fifth. That doesn’t automatically translate into the overtake metric — this table filters out pit-stop shuffles unless the gain sticks to the finish — but it does provide a neat bit of context for why Antonelli is the name attached to the biggest ranking rise as well.
There’s a quieter irony at the top: Bortoleto led the season’s overtake count coming into this round and still does, despite finishing 15th from 17th in Azerbaijan. With 15 races completed, that’s a reminder that the “most overtakes” table is often a season-long reflection of where a driver tends to spend their Sundays, not just a reward for one standout finish.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Andrea Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | 7 | 4 | +3 | 74 |
| Carlos Sainz | Williams | 12 | 9 | +3 | 64 |
| Pierre Gasly | Alpine F1 Team | 9 | 12 | -3 | 60 |
With Bortoleto still leading on 81 and Verstappen and Hülkenberg tied on 78, the top is stable but finely balanced. Antonelli’s jump to fourth on 74 tightens the queue behind the top three, while Sainz’s return to ninth and Gasly’s drop to 12th show how quickly the top-10 boundary can flip when totals are this close.