After 13 races, George Russell remains the season’s biggest net loser of grid-to-flag places at −8, but Monza dramatically reshaped the chase pack. Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s win from 19th helped send him tumbling out of the top 10 of this particular metric, while Pierre Gasly’s pole-to-seventh swing pushed him into the top three.
By Julian Reyes
George Russell’s name still sits at the top of the 2026 ‘Most positions lost’ table after the Italian Grand Prix, holding station on a season total of −8. That matters because this isn’t a form guide or points table; it’s a cumulative measure of how much ground a driver has bled relative to where they started on Sundays. And even with Monza producing big swings elsewhere, Russell’s deficit remains the one everyone else is still trying to avoid matching.
The more telling development is behind him: the top three has changed without a change at the top. Charles Leclerc now sits second on −3, while Pierre Gasly has leapt into third on +1. In a ranking where negative numbers are the problem and positives can be a sign of damage limitation or recovery, Gasly being as high as third with a positive total underlines how volatile the midfield-to-front end of this list has become after 13 rounds.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli produced the biggest grid-to-finish gain of the entire Italian Grand Prix, going from 19th on the grid to 1st at the flag over 53 laps. In points terms that’s 25, but in ‘Most positions lost’ terms it’s even more consequential: he drops from 2nd to 15th in the season ranking, a 13-place slide, with his season value now sitting at +11. The paradox is the point: a driver can have a transformational Sunday and still ‘lose’ a lot of ranking places here, because this metric punishes season-long net losses, not isolated peaks.
Gasly’s own Monza was the mirror image. He started 1st and finished 7th, scoring 6 points, which is a six-place loss in a single afternoon — and it drags his season total to +1. Yet that swing is precisely why he rockets from 9th to 3rd in this ranking, a six-position jump in the standings. When a list is built on accumulation, one high-profile fade from the front can reshape the leaderboard as much as a run of smaller Sundays elsewhere.
Lando Norris moved the other way in the standings, but not in the way a driver wants: he falls from 14th to 19th, down five spots in the ranking, with a season value of +15. On a weekend when the biggest mover gained 18 positions, Norris ends up highlighted for the opposite reason — his season profile now sits further away from the ‘least lost’ end of the grid-to-flag spectrum.
The top-10 bubble took a clear hit at Monza. Antonelli is the headline exit, dropping out as he sinks to 15th overall in the metric after being as high as 2nd. The flip side is a new name appearing: Yuki Tsunoda enters the top 10 in 8th place for RB F1 Team, carrying a season value of +5 — not a flattering number, but good enough to be inside a reshuffled group where the order has become as important as the totals.
A smaller but still meaningful shift comes from Arvid Lindblad, who slips from 7th to 10th, down three ranking places, on a season figure of +6. That’s the warning label on this metric: even when the overall leaderboard leader doesn’t change, the distribution beneath can move sharply. With 13 races completed, the mid-table of the ‘Most positions lost’ list is beginning to look less like a settled pattern and more like a week-to-week referendum on who is protecting their grid work — and who is giving it back on Sunday.
Yes — and that’s the key takeaway from round 13. Russell’s −8 remains the benchmark at the top, and the signal here is continuity: no leader change, but a continued churn underneath. Gasly’s rise to third, Leclerc’s hold on second at −3, and Antonelli’s plunge out of the top 10 show how quickly this ranking can re-order even when the headline number at the very top stays fixed.
The forward-looking angle is less about predicting who will ‘lead’ this list next and more about pressure points. A single weekend like Gasly’s — 1st to 7th — can swing both perception and position in the ranking. Meanwhile, Norris sitting on +15 and falling to 19th shows how hard it is to climb back once a season profile has been built. With the table now stretching from −8 at the top to positives filling much of the top 10 conversation, the next shifts are likely to come from sharp Sundays rather than slow drifts.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Andrea Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | 2 | 15 | -13 | +11 |
| Pierre Gasly | Alpine F1 Team | 9 | 3 | +6 | +1 |
| Lando Norris | McLaren | 14 | 19 | -5 | +15 |
Russell’s −8 keeps him the clear reference point for season-long ground lost from grid to finish, but Monza proved the chasing group is anything but settled: Gasly’s surge to third and Antonelli’s fall out of the top 10 show that one extreme Sunday can reorder this list quickly, while drivers like Norris on +15 risk getting anchored to the bottom unless their net Sunday movement improves.