Round 10 at Spa-Francorchamps didn’t change the leader of 2026’s “Most positions gained” table, but it reshaped the chase behind. Isack Hadjar’s Belgian GP climb from 21st on the grid to 6th vaulted him into the top three, while Lando Norris forced his way into the top 10.
By Diego Torres
Max Verstappen remains the benchmark in 2026’s “Most positions gained” ranking after the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps, holding P1 on +20 with the table’s lead unchanged through 10 races. That stability at the top matters because Spa delivered the season’s biggest single-weekend swing in the pack behind: Isack Hadjar surged from 18th to 3rd in the overall ranking, instantly turning what had looked like a two-driver pursuit into a three-way scrap for the places behind Verstappen.
Hadjar’s jump is built on a striking Sunday recovery at Spa. Starting 21st and finishing 6th across 44 laps, he banked a 15-place gain in one go, which is also the biggest movement magnitude flagged this round. It’s the sort of haul that can change the shape of a season-long accumulation metric in a single afternoon, and it’s why the top three has changed even though the leader has not.
The headline mover is Hadjar: +15 for the season now, and P3 overall after Belgium. That one number neatly captures both the size of the Spa recovery (21st to 6th) and its consequence in the standings (18th to 3rd). With Verstappen on +20 and Liam Lawson now P2 on +17, Hadjar’s +15 suddenly puts him within touching distance of the runner-up spot in a table where gains add up incrementally and big leaps are rare.
There’s an extra layer of contrast in the Red Bull story at Spa. Verstappen’s own Belgian GP was the opposite of a recovery: he started 2nd and finished 3rd, a net loss of one place on the day even as he keeps the season lead on +20. Hadjar, in the same team, supplied the kind of deep-grid climb this ranking is designed to reward, and that juxtaposition underlines how this metric can tell a very different story to headline results alone.
Lando Norris provided the other meaningful reshuffle, climbing from 13th to 5th in the ranking with a season total of +11. That move makes him a new top-10 entrant for the week, and it shifts the middle of the table into a more crowded fight: Fernando Alonso and Sergio Pérez both sit on +11 too, but each slipped three places in rank to 8th and 9th respectively as Norris rose above them.
Those squeezes have real consequences at the edge of the top 10. Two names dropped out entirely this round—Alexander Albon and Lewis Hamilton—showing how little margin there is once the pack compresses around similar season totals. In that context, Norris’s eight-place jump in rank is as much about timing as volume: when several drivers are clustered on the same headline number, one strong update can reorder multiple positions at once.
The biggest fall among the highlighted movers was Arvid Lindblad, down four places from 11th to 15th, even though his season total is listed as +4. Spa itself hints at the tension in his profile: he qualified 8th, started 7th, and finished 9th to take 2 points over 44 laps, which is a two-place loss from grid to flag. In a ranking that only rewards net progress from a proper grid slot, those small Sundays where you finish behind where you started can quietly undo earlier gains.
What emerges after 10 races is a table with two simultaneous truths: the top remains anchored (Verstappen still P1 on +20), but the pack behind is volatile. With a “streak” signal still active and the top three now reshaped, the next few rounds don’t need another 15-place Sunday to move the order again—just a couple of weekends where the +11 group edges forward or backward could be enough to redraw the top 10.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Isack Hadjar | Red Bull | 18 | 3 | +15 | +15 |
| Lando Norris | McLaren | 13 | 5 | +8 | +11 |
| Arvid Lindblad | RB F1 Team | 11 | 15 | -4 | +4 |
Verstappen’s +20 cushion holds, but Hadjar’s arrival on +15 changes the geometry of the chase: Lawson’s P2 on +17 is now within range, and the +11 cluster (Norris, Alonso, Pérez) looks set to trade places with small swings rather than needing huge comebacks.