The Momentum ranking measures who is accelerating or cooling off by comparing the last three races’ points-per-race to earlier 2026 form. Round 16 in Kuala Lumpur kept Max Verstappen comfortably on top, but Charles Leclerc’s jump from 21st to third rewired the top order.
By Nadia Okafor
Max Verstappen remains the clear Momentum ranking leader after round 16 at Sepang, holding P1 with a +11.49 swing in points-per-race form. With the ranking built specifically to capture who is scoring faster now than earlier in the season, Verstappen’s margin still reads like a separate category to the rest of the field — and the headline is that he didn’t need a reshuffle at the very top to underline it.
What did change was the shape of the chase. The top three is different now even though the leader did not change: Isack Hadjar sits second on +4.70, while Charles Leclerc has surged into third on +2.23. That combination matters because it shows the “recent-form” story isn’t only about Verstappen’s continued heat; it’s about which drivers are now establishing themselves as the closest momentum threats, and which are drifting away.
Leclerc produced the ranking’s defining move of the weekend: up 18 places from P21 to P3, landing at +2.23 for Ferrari. That is the biggest positional change in either direction in this week’s key narrative, and it instantly recasts Leclerc from a driver whose recent scoring had lagged his earlier baseline into one who is now outperforming it.
The race result at Sepang adds context without having to overreach for explanations. Leclerc started fourth and finished fourth, scoring 12 points across 55 laps, having qualified fifth. On a weekend where Verstappen converted pole into the win, Leclerc’s steady, points-paying Sunday still contributed to a three-race recent window strong enough to drag his Momentum number sharply into the positive — and, crucially, into the top three.
Leclerc isn’t the only name to muscle into the sharp end. Fernando Alonso has climbed eight places from 13th to fifth with a +1.10 value for Aston Martin, while Liam Lawson has jumped 12 places from 18th to sixth on +0.97 for RB F1 Team. Those gains are the type the Momentum ranking is designed to spotlight: not season-long accumulation, but an uptick in scoring rate that can change the pecking order quickly once the most recent three rounds outweigh a longer “earlier-season” sample.
The flip side is that the top 10 has become less forgiving. George Russell, Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Valtteri Bottas are the three names that drop out of the top 10 entrants list this week, a reminder that form swings can be as much about losing ground as it is about gaining it. With the signals flagging a top-10 entry and a changed top three, the mid-top tier is clearly fluid rather than settled.
Mercedes takes the hardest hit on this week’s Momentum story. Russell plunges 16 places from P2 to P18 with a −1.18 value, while Antonelli drops 13 places from P4 to P17 with −0.87. This ranking is explicitly a comparison of “now” versus “before”, so negative numbers of that scale tell you their latest three-race scoring rate has fallen behind their earlier-season average — and fast.
Russell’s Sepang weekend illustrates how quickly that can happen in a metric built on recent points. He started seventh, qualified eighth, retired on lap 49 and scored 0 points, and with 16 races now completed that zero has a direct, disproportionate impact on a three-round window. The broader implication isn’t a prediction; it’s that in a momentum model, one bad weekend doesn’t just sting — it can reverse the narrative, as the double Mercedes drop and the simultaneous top-10 exits show.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | 21 | 3 | +18 | +2.23 |
| George Russell | Mercedes | 2 | 18 | -16 | −1.18 |
| Andrea Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | 4 | 17 | -13 | −0.87 |
With Verstappen still P1 on +11.49, the Momentum ranking’s main tension shifts to the chase: Hadjar on +4.70 and a suddenly resurgent Leclerc on +2.23 are now the closest recent-form comparators. The bigger warning light is for Mercedes — Russell (−1.18) and Antonelli (−0.87) have both flipped into a cooling trend that also pushed them out of the top 10.