After six races, Liam Lawson remains the benchmark for scoring when starting 11th or lower (or from the pit lane), even as Arvid Lindblad’s Monaco surge reshuffles the top 10. Monaco’s grid-to-flag swings also dragged Franco Colapinto and Isack Hadjar backwards in this ranking.
By Elena Marsh
Liam Lawson still tops the 2026 “Points from outside the top 10” ranking after Monaco, holding first on 14 with the top three unchanged. That stability matters in a metric built on damage limitation and recovery drives: once a driver has banked a big haul from a bad starting slot, everyone else has to keep finding those same opportunities just to keep pace.
Lawson’s own Monaco contribution underlined the theme. Starting 10th and finishing 6th, he turned a compromised grid position into 8 points across 78 laps, reinforcing why he has been the season’s reference point in this ranking. Max Verstappen remains second on 12, and Oliver Bearman third on 7, leaving the real story at round 6 less about the very top and more about who is building the next wave of ‘from-behind’ scoring.
Arvid Lindblad’s Monaco was the purest expression of what this table measures: start outside the top 10, then convert the gap to the flag into points. From 15th on the grid to 7th at the finish, Lindblad produced an eight-place swing and collected 6 points, a return strong enough to launch him up six places in the ranking from 10th to 4th.
The ranking is intentionally narrow — it only counts points scored in races where the driver started 11th or worse (or from the pit lane) — so moments like this carry disproportionate weight. Lindblad didn’t just add points; he added relevance, inserting himself directly behind the established top three and tightening the fight for the positions just off the podium places of this metric.
If Lindblad embodied upward mobility, Franco Colapinto illustrated the opposite: a poor starting position that stays poor. Colapinto started 14th and finished 14th in Monaco, completing 78 laps but scoring 0 points, and that blank result coincided with a slide of three places in the ranking from 6th to 9th — leaving him on 1.
Isack Hadjar also fell out of the top 10 entirely, dropping from 9th to 11th on 0, a reminder that this ranking punishes inactivity as much as it rewards heroics. Even Carlos Sainz, despite holding 6, slipped one position from 4th to 5th, which underlines how congested the mid-table is: small shifts in who converts an off-grid start into a points finish can reorder the picture quickly, even when the overall totals don’t move dramatically.
Fernando Alonso’s move into the top 10 is the quiet subplot with real meaning. He climbed two spots from 12th to 10th, sitting on 1 for Aston Martin — a modest total, but enough to cross the cut line as others stalled. In a ranking that requires at least one start outside the top 10 to even appear, simply turning one such weekend into points can be the difference between being a factor and being invisible.
With six races completed and Monaco reinforcing that the lead has not changed, the developing pattern is a blend of consolidation up front and volatility behind. Lawson’s 14 keeps the target clear, Verstappen’s 12 stays within striking distance, while Lindblad’s jump to 4th signals that one well-timed recovery can reshape the pack. The next shifts will hinge on who keeps manufacturing points from sub-optimal grid slots — because in this metric, the opportunity is the currency.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arvid Lindblad | RB F1 Team | 10 | 4 | +6 | 6 |
| Franco Colapinto | Alpine F1 Team | 6 | 9 | -3 | 1 |
| Fernando Alonso | Aston Martin | 12 | 10 | +2 | 1 |
Lawson’s 14-point lead in this metric stays intact after Monaco, keeping Verstappen’s 12 as the nearest reference. The bigger shift is Lindblad jumping to 4th on 6, while Colapinto’s fall to 9th and Hadjar’s exit to 11th shows how quickly the top 10 can change when outside-the-top-10 starts don’t translate into points.