Round 16 at Sepang flips the top of the 2026 ‘Biggest improvement vs qualifying’ ranking, with Esteban Ocon moving ahead of Sergio Pérez on mean qualifying-to-finish gain. Further down, Gabriel Bortoleto’s sharp fall and Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s push into the top 10 underline how quickly this table can swing over 16 races.
By Diego Torres
The lead has changed hands. Esteban Ocon is the new No.1 in ‘Biggest improvement vs qualifying’ after Sepang, sitting on a +4.17 mean gain, which edges Sergio Pérez’s +4.00 and ends Pérez’s stint at the top of this metric. With the ranking built on qualifying position minus race classification position (and requiring at least 3 classified weekends), that 0.17 margin is small enough to keep the fight live, but meaningful enough to reframe who has been most reliably “better on Sunday” across 16 races.
Ocon’s Sepang weekend shows the kind of swing that can decide a tight lead. He qualified 19th and was classified 15th, a four-place improvement that bolsters a season-long profile of converting difficult grid positions into relatively stronger finishes. It’s also a reminder that this is not the same as “positions gained from the grid”: it’s explicitly tied to qualifying order, so the story here is consistency of race-day recovery relative to qualifying, not what happened on the starting grid.
The top three otherwise stays intact, which matters because it suggests the change is about a swap at the very top rather than a broader reshuffle. Alexander Albon remains third on +3.33, keeping Pérez honest from one side while Ocon now pressures from the other.
The biggest swing came from Gabriel Bortoleto, who drops six places from 10th to 16th, sliding to −0.14. That’s a steep fall in a table where the leaders are still comfortably positive, and it came on a weekend when his numbers ran in the wrong direction: qualifying 10th and finishing 18th leaves an eight-place loss in this metric’s language. In a ranking that requires repeated classified results to even appear, that kind of outlier weekend can quickly drag a season average below zero — and, in Bortoleto’s case, out of the top 10 entirely.
At the other end of the movement scale, Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s round was doubly important: he’s a top gainer and a top-10 entrant. Antonelli rises three spots from 13th to 10th with a +0.67 mean, helped at Sepang by qualifying 4th and finishing 2nd for 18 points — a two-place improvement by this measure. It’s not yet a headline number like +4.17, but crossing into the top 10 signals that his season is trending toward converting strong qualifying into even stronger results often enough to matter in a cumulative average.
Lewis Hamilton also gains three places, moving from 15th to 12th at +0.27 for Ferrari. That figure tells its own story: even after 16 races, he’s only slightly on the positive side of the line, so the climb is more about fine margins and incremental consolidation than a breakout. Still, it’s a meaningful jump in a congested mid-table where one weekend can shift several ranks.
Antonelli’s entry into 10th comes with a clear casualty: Bortoleto is named as the top-10 exit after Sepang. That exchange captures the ranking’s underlying tension: it rewards repeated recovery from qualifying, and it punishes weekends where a driver ends up classified well behind their Saturday position. Over 16 races completed, the average has enough weight to reflect season direction — but it is still sensitive to extremes, which is why the top-10 line remains a moving target.
There are other warning signs in the lower reaches too. Pierre Gasly slips three places from 16th to 19th and sits at −1.00, while Max Verstappen drops two spots from seventh to ninth despite holding a still-strong +1.82. Verstappen’s presence here is an interesting contrast point: he won from pole at Sepang, yet in this specific metric he is not among the biggest improvers because the calculation is about outperforming qualifying position — and starting at the front leaves less “room” to gain.
Zooming back out, the absence of a “streak” signal and the maximum movement magnitude of six underline the current theme: volatility. Ocon has the lead, but the gap to Pérez is 0.17 and the top three didn’t change beyond first and second, so the decisive action may be less about a dominant new pattern and more about which drivers avoid the occasional heavy hit that can tug an average down for weeks.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gabriel Bortoleto | Audi | 10 | 16 | -6 | −0.14 |
| Andrea Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | 13 | 10 | +3 | +0.67 |
| Lewis Hamilton | Ferrari | 15 | 12 | +3 | +0.27 |
Ocon’s +4.17 puts him in control of the ‘Biggest improvement vs qualifying’ lead, but Pérez is only 0.17 behind on +4.00, so one strong recovery weekend could flip it again. The sharper storyline may be the top-10 cut line: Antonelli’s move into 10th and Bortoleto’s drop to 16th show how a single extreme qualifying-to-finish swing can reshape the midfield of this metric even after 16 races.