Six races into 2026, the ‘Most positions lost’ table has a new name at the top: George Russell, whose Monaco result turned a single bad Sunday into a season-leading −7 net loss. Behind him, Arvid Lindblad’s big ranking slide came despite a Monaco recovery drive.
By Elena Marsh
George Russell is the new leader of the 2026 ‘Most positions lost’ ranking after the Monaco Grand Prix, moving to a season total of −7. In this metric, that’s the wrong kind of consistency: it’s the cumulative sum of final classification minus grid position across every classified race started from a proper grid slot, so the most negative total sits P1.
Monaco supplied the decisive hit. Russell started sixth and finished 12th at the Circuit de Monaco, a net loss of six places from grid to flag across 78 laps. With the ranking now six races deep, that one −6 swing has proved enough to vault him to the top overall — and it reshuffles the narrative because the previous leader, Arvid Lindblad, has been displaced.
Lindblad’s movement is the weekend’s most counterintuitive subplot: he drops from rank 1 to rank 9 in the ‘Most positions lost’ table, even though Monaco was a clear gain on the road. The RB F1 Team driver started 15th and finished seventh, banking six points after 78 laps — an eight-place recovery that would normally be a tonic in a grid-vs-finish story.
But this ranking is cumulative and unforgiving. Lindblad’s season figure now sits at +4, meaning he has net gained places overall rather than lost them. That’s why he tumbles down this particular list: a driver improving their net movement is, by definition, falling away from a “most positions lost” lead. In six races, the swing from being the season’s biggest net loser to being firmly in positive territory is massive, even if it reads like bad news only because of what this table measures.
With Russell on −7, the rest of the top three underlines how early-season volatility is still settling. Isack Hadjar sits second for Red Bull on −2, while Franco Colapinto is third for Alpine F1 Team on 0 — essentially the neutral line where grid position and finishing position have balanced out across the year so far.
That spread matters because it shows how a single Monaco-sized swing can reorder the table. Russell’s −7 is already five places worse than Hadjar’s −2 in net terms, and seven worse than Colapinto’s 0, creating a clear separation at the front even though only six races have been completed.
Monaco also rearranged the top 10. Lando Norris and Oliver Bearman are the new entrants, while Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon dropped out. The ranking’s tie-breakers aren’t needed to explain this shake-up: the moves are too large to ignore.
Norris jumps four places from 12th to eighth and now sits at +3 despite a Monaco retirement after starting eighth and completing 43 laps. Bearman climbs four places from 14th to 10th and holds +5, one of three drivers (along with Carlos Sainz, who rises from 15th to 11th on +5) making the biggest upward move of the week in ranking position. In the context of this table, those upward moves are effectively ‘improvements’: they reflect drivers trending away from being net losers across the season.
The sharpest negative movers in ranking position were Ocon and Gasly, and both moves tell the same story from opposite angles. Ocon drops eight places from ninth to 17th and sits on +10 for Haas F1 Team, while Gasly falls seven places from eighth to 15th on +7 for Alpine F1 Team. Those positive totals indicate net gains across the season — good in racing terms — but they are poison for a list that crowns the biggest net loser.
The net effect is that Monaco compressed the battle lines behind Russell. With drivers like Ocon and Gasly moving quickly into positive territory, the contest for the top of ‘Most positions lost’ becomes increasingly about who can avoid another Russell-style grid-to-flag slide, because one outlier weekend is already enough to create a −7 anchor point at the front.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arvid Lindblad | RB F1 Team | 1 | 9 | -8 | +4 |
| Esteban Ocon | Haas F1 Team | 9 | 17 | -8 | +10 |
| Pierre Gasly | Alpine F1 Team | 8 | 15 | -7 | +7 |
Russell’s −7 gives the ‘Most positions lost’ ranking a clear reference point after six rounds: the rest of the front group now needs sustained clean Sundays to stop one Monaco-sized swing from defining the season’s net-loss story.