After round 5 in Montreal, the top of the 2026 ‘Most overtakes’ ranking is unchanged — but the chase pack has been reshaped by Oscar Piastri’s biggest jump of the week.
By Elena Marsh
Max Verstappen remains the benchmark in 2026’s Most overtakes ranking after the Canadian Grand Prix at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve: 37 overtakes keeps him ranked first, and the signals are clear that this was a consolidating weekend rather than a leadership swing (leaderChanged: false, topThreeChanged: false). Verstappen’s margin to second is still tangible, with Nico Hülkenberg on 29 — an eight-overtake gap that matters in a metric built on cumulative season volume rather than a single headline move.
The more immediate story sits behind Verstappen: the pack is compressing in ways that could make the next reshuffle easier to trigger. George Russell is third on 28, only one behind Hülkenberg, meaning the fight for second is effectively one clean, busy race away from flipping. Verstappen, meanwhile, underlined his weekend’s competitiveness in the wider context by turning grid 6 into a finish of 3rd in Montreal, scoring 15 points — not part of this ranking’s calculation, but relevant as the tie-breaker should the overtake counts ever lock together.
Oscar Piastri produced the ranking’s defining movement: up 10 positions, from 14th to 4th, on a season total of 26 overtakes for McLaren. That’s the largest movement magnitude flagged this week, and it changes the feel of the top 10 because it’s not a marginal edge into 10th — it’s a leap straight into the first page of contenders.
The contrast with his Montreal result is what makes the jump so analytically interesting. Piastri started 4th but ended 11th, classified Lapped after 66 laps and scoring 0 points. Yet this ranking’s methodology credits only genuine position changes across consecutive laps (excluding pit-stop shuffles unless the strategic gain sticks), so a low points day can still be an overtake-rich day. In other words, Piastri’s rise is a reminder that ‘Most overtakes’ tracks race-to-race opportunity and execution rather than final classification alone.
McLaren’s double presence in the movers list is the week’s most coherent secondary theme. Alongside Piastri’s jump to 4th on 26, Lando Norris climbed four places from 12th to 8th with 21 overtakes. That puts two McLarens inside the top 10 after round 5 — and it puts Norris level on count with Gabriel Bortoleto, who sits 9th for Audi on the same 21.
That tie matters because ties are split by total season points and then alphabetically, so Norris versus Bortoleto is not just a neat numerical match: it’s an unstable ordering that can change without one driver necessarily ‘out-overtaking’ the other by much. More broadly, Piastri’s 26 also pins him right onto the shoulder of the upper trio: he’s two behind Russell’s 28 and three behind Hülkenberg’s 29, turning what had been a clear top three into a more crowded leading group in raw overtake volume.
The exits underline how unforgiving the ranking has become after five races with full lap-chart data included. Liam Lawson dropped six places from 6th to 12th for the RB F1 Team, now on 20 overtakes, making him the biggest loser of the week. Andrea Kimi Antonelli fell four places from 7th to 11th on 20, and Isack Hadjar also slid four from 9th to 13th on 18 — all three moving from top-10 visibility to needing a swing weekend to get back in.
Lawson’s own Canadian Grand Prix result adds a layer of tension to that drop. He converted grid 12 into a finish of 7th, classified Lapped after 67 laps, scoring 6 points — the kind of day that looks like progress on a results sheet, yet didn’t prevent a significant ranking slide in overtakes. With a streak signal active, the broader takeaway is momentum: Verstappen’s lead is steady, but the churn behind him is accelerating, and the top 10 now contains fewer ‘protected’ spots than it did a round ago.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oscar Piastri | McLaren | 14 | 4 | +10 | 26 |
| Liam Lawson | RB F1 Team | 6 | 12 | -6 | 20 |
| Lando Norris | McLaren | 12 | 8 | +4 | 21 |
Verstappen’s 37 keeps a firm hold on P1, but Piastri’s move to 26 compresses the fight just behind the top three: he’s now within 3 of Hülkenberg and 2 of Russell, while Norris entering on 21 creates a tight tie-zone with Bortoleto that could flip on small margins.