After 15 races, Sergio Pérez’s season-long pattern of grid-to-flag recovery keeps him P1 on Best average positions gained at +4.25. The Azerbaijan GP reshuffled the fight behind him, with Nico Hülkenberg jumping six places into the top 10 while Oscar Piastri took a sharp hit.
By Elena Marsh
Sergio Pérez remains the benchmark for F1 2026’s Best average positions gained ranking after the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, holding P1 on +4.25 with no change at the top. That matters because this metric doesn’t care where you qualify in isolation — it measures how reliably a driver turns a starting grid slot into a better finishing position, and then averages that performance across the races that count.
Baku was a neat micro-example of why Pérez is there. From a grid position of 20th he finished 14th, a +6 swing that keeps feeding the same underlying story: even without points in Azerbaijan, he continues to bank positions gained that separate him from the pack on this table. With the top three unchanged — Esteban Ocon still second on +3.60 and Liam Lawson third on +3.11 — the tension has shifted to the drivers trying to force their way into that chasing group.
The biggest structural change is at the edge of the top 10, where Nico Hülkenberg has turned a single Sunday recovery into a ranking swing. He climbed from 16th to 10th overall (movement: +6) and now sits on an average of +1.60 for Audi. That leap is the largest movement magnitude in the ranking update, and it came in the most on-brand way possible for this metric: by out-performing his grid spot when it mattered.
Hülkenberg’s Azerbaijan numbers are clean and easy to read. He started 18th and finished 11th over 51 laps, a net gain of seven positions in one classified race — exactly the kind of ‘grid minus finish’ overtake count this ranking is built around. It was enough to push him into the top 10 list alongside Andrea Kimi Antonelli (now ninth on +1.64), and it coincided with two exits from that group: Franco Colapinto and Lando Norris.
Oscar Piastri’s drop is the standout negative story in the reshuffle. He fell five places in the ranking from 12th to 17th, and his season average has tipped to −0.09 for McLaren — a stark number in a table where the leaders are all solidly positive. Azerbaijan explains the swing: Piastri started 3rd and finished 13th, losing 10 places on a day where simply limiting the damage would have mattered for an average-based metric.
Colapinto’s slide is more subtle but still costly in such a compressed midfield table. He’s down three spots, from 8th to 11th, despite still carrying a positive +1.57 for Alpine F1 Team. When the margins are this tight around the top-10 cutoff, a movement like Hülkenberg’s can turn one driver’s solid positive into an 11th-place number that reads like a miss, even if the underlying average remains respectable.
Max Verstappen and Antonelli both used the Azerbaijan update to inch closer to the sharp end, even though the headline positions remain locked. Verstappen improved from sixth to fourth and is now on +2.82 for Red Bull, while Antonelli moved from 11th to ninth with a +1.64 average for Mercedes. In a ranking defined by repeatability, two-place climbs matter because they often signal a run of races where the driver’s Sundays have been consistently better than their Saturdays.
There was also a Baku-specific reminder of how swingy grid-to-finish movement can be across a single weekend. The race had seven DNFs, and Antonelli was named the biggest mover of the entire field with an 11-place gain. That kind of volatility is exactly why this ranking uses an average and enforces a minimum of three counted races: it rewards the drivers who keep finding positions over time, not just the ones who spike once.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nico Hülkenberg | Audi | 16 | 10 | +6 | +1.60 |
| Oscar Piastri | McLaren | 12 | 17 | -5 | −0.09 |
| Franco Colapinto | Alpine F1 Team | 8 | 11 | -3 | +1.57 |
Pérez’s +4.25 lead remains intact and the top three hasn’t moved, but the Azerbaijan GP tightened the story around the top-10 cutoff: Hülkenberg’s jump to 10th and Piastri’s fall to 17th show how quickly an average can swing when a driver either converts a low grid spot into a big recovery — or turns a front-row start into a net loss of positions.