Round 9 at Silverstone tightened the front of the 2026 Most overtakes table, with Oscar Piastri jumping four places to sit just two behind Max Verstappen. Verstappen’s own British GP ended in retirement, but his season-long passing total still keeps him P1.
By Julian Reyes
Max Verstappen remains the benchmark in the 2026 Most overtakes ranking after the British Grand Prix, holding P1 on 51. But the headline shift at Silverstone is how much pressure has arrived behind him: Oscar Piastri vaulted from P6 to P2, landing on 49 and cutting the gap to just two overtakes.
That tightening is made sharper by the context of Silverstone’s results for both drivers. Verstappen started 7th and retired after 46 laps, scoring 0 points, while Piastri started 8th, finished 11th over 52 laps, and also left with 0 points. Yet in a ranking built from lap-by-lap position changes — counting only genuine passes and durable strategy gains, and excluding pit-stop shuffles — the British GP still reshaped the hierarchy behind the leader.
The top three is now densely packed: Verstappen leads on 51, Piastri is second on 49, and George Russell sits third on 47. In pure ranking terms, that’s a four-overtake spread from first to third after nine races completed — and a sign that one strong weekend of forward motion can flip the order even without a podium-worthy finish.
Piastri’s move is the standout because it didn’t just add volume; it changed the shape of the contest. Jumping four positions in a single round to become Verstappen’s nearest challenger means the ranking has shifted from a comfortable lead to a narrow margin where every on-track pass and every lasting strategic swap matters.
Piastri wasn’t the only big riser. Oliver Bearman matched the largest movement magnitude of the update, climbing four spots from P10 to P6 with 43 overtakes for Haas. That puts him inside the leading group rather than hanging onto the edge of the top 10, a meaningful repositioning in a metric where volume tends to accumulate steadily rather than spike randomly.
The steepest fall among the key movers belonged to Gabriel Bortoleto. The Audi driver dropped three places from P2 to P5 despite holding 46 overtakes, which underlines how congested the table has become: 46 is still within five of the lead, yet it now only ranks fifth. Bortoleto’s Silverstone weekend shows the split between race result and ranking impact, too — he started 11th, finished 8th, completed 52 laps and scored 4 points, but still lost ground relative to rivals who piled up more passes across the season-to-date.
The British GP also brought a top-10 boundary shift. Franco Colapinto entered the top 10 at P9 for Alpine on 40 overtakes, moving up two positions from P11. Those kinds of steps are often the difference between being a regular presence on the leaderboard and being effectively invisible in season-long passing totals.
At the same time, Lewis Hamilton dropped out of the top 10, a reminder that this ranking is relentless: it rewards sustained forward progress and strips out ‘free’ position gains created by pit-stop timing unless the change becomes a lasting net gain by the finish. Elsewhere near the cut line, Carlos Sainz slipped two places from P8 to P10 on 38 for Williams, while Pierre Gasly fell from P5 to P7 on 42 — more evidence that the midfield of the table is tightly stacked and vulnerable to small swings.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oscar Piastri | McLaren | 6 | 2 | +4 | 49 |
| Oliver Bearman | Haas F1 Team | 10 | 6 | +4 | 43 |
| Gabriel Bortoleto | Audi | 2 | 5 | -3 | 46 |
Verstappen’s 51 still sets the pace, but with Piastri on 49 and Russell on 47, the Most overtakes lead is no longer insulated. Bortoleto’s drop to fifth on 46 shows how quickly rank can change even when totals stay high, while Bearman’s rise to sixth and Colapinto’s entry at ninth tighten the battle around the top 10.