Max Verstappen still tops the 2026 Most overtakes ranking after Barcelona with 42, but the big story is the movement behind him: Gabriel Bortoleto jumps to second on 36 and George Russell slots into third on 35.
By Nadia Okafor
Max Verstappen remains the reference point in the 2026 Most overtakes ranking after round 7 at Barcelona: 42 overtakes for Red Bull, and no change at the top. But while the leader stays put, the shape of the fight underneath him has shifted sharply, and it’s that volatility that defines this week’s update.
Gabriel Bortoleto has delivered the standout climb. He has surged from ninth to second, a seven-place gain that leaves him on 36 and within touching distance of the lead. That jump is significant not just because it rewrites his season narrative in this metric, but because it reorders the top three: George Russell is now third for Mercedes on 35, only one behind Bortoleto, making the battle behind Verstappen tighter than it has looked at any point so far.
The immediate intrigue now is the compression from second to third and the pressure it applies to first. Bortoleto’s 36 puts him six back from Verstappen’s 42, while Russell is only a single overtake behind Bortoleto. That’s a narrow margin in a ranking built from lap-by-lap, pairwise position swaps, where a busy Sunday can change the picture quickly.
Barcelona also offered a reminder that this metric can reward drivers who are active in traffic even when the final classification doesn’t sparkle. Bortoleto started 12th and finished 11th, classified as lapped after 64 laps and scoring 0 points, yet still emerged as the week’s major mover in overtakes. Verstappen, meanwhile, went from fifth on the grid to fourth at the finish, completing 66 laps and taking 12 points; his ranking lead holds because the season’s accumulated passing volume remains unmatched.
The top 10 has been re-cut around a new 30-overtake threshold. Pierre Gasly is now eighth for Alpine F1 Team on 30 after rising three spots from 11th, and he’s joined on the same number by Isack Hadjar (ninth for Red Bull) and Liam Lawson (10th for RB F1 Team). Three drivers tied on 30 creates a fragile lower edge to the top 10: a small swing can flip multiple positions, and tie-breaks can become decisive when totals compress.
That squeeze has pushed three names out: Esteban Ocon, Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris are the listed top-10 exits. Ocon’s drop is the clearest signal of the volatility here — down four places from seventh to 11th with 28 — while Leclerc falls from eighth to 12th on 26 and Norris slides from 10th to 14th on 24. When a ranking is this bunched around the cut line, it doesn’t take a collapse to lose ground; it takes others having a bigger, cleaner passing week.
Beyond Bortoleto’s leap, Lewis Hamilton produced the other eye-catching climb: up six spots from 19th to 13th, bringing Ferrari to 24 overtakes on the season in this measure. It’s not a move into the headline positions yet, but it matters in a table where the mid-pack is crowded and where one more strong round can convert incremental progress into meaningful rank gains.
At the other end, Ocon’s four-place fall is the sharpest negative swing among the highlighted movers, and it comes with a tangible cost: he’s now outside the top 10, looking up at the 30-overtake trio that has formed the new gatekeeper group. Ocon’s Barcelona result — 17th on the grid to 13th at the finish, lapped after 64 laps and on 0 points — underlines how this ranking can diverge from the points table, and how quickly the overtakes order can punish a quiet race in traffic.
One broader trend is that the “streak” continues: the season keeps producing notable movement even without a change at the top. Verstappen’s lead is stable, but the rest of the list is behaving like a live market — and Barcelona has made the fight behind him harder to ignore.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gabriel Bortoleto | Audi | 9 | 2 | +7 | 36 |
| Lewis Hamilton | Ferrari | 19 | 13 | +6 | 24 |
| Esteban Ocon | Haas F1 Team | 7 | 11 | -4 | 28 |
Verstappen’s Most overtakes lead is intact at 42, but Bortoleto’s jump to 36 has turned second place into a genuine pressure point — especially with Russell only one back on 35. With the bottom of the top 10 now clustered at 30, the next ranking update could swing multiple places even without a change at the top.