Max Verstappen’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix climb from eighth to second flips the season-long ‘Most positions gained’ ranking, edging Liam Lawson. There were big mid-table swings too, led by Oscar Piastri’s drop out of the top 10.
By Julian Reyes
Max Verstappen is the new leader of the 2026 ‘Most positions gained’ ranking after the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, moving ahead of previous leader Liam Lawson. The swing at the top is built on Verstappen’s Baku result: he started eighth and finished second, banking a net gain of six positions in a race where he was classified across 51 laps and therefore fully counted by the methodology.
That one Sunday matters because this table isn’t about points or peak finishes; it’s a season-long accumulation of grid-to-flag movement in classified races. Verstappen now sits on +31 for the year, with Lawson at +28 and Andrea Kimi Antonelli up to third on +23. With only three positions covering first to second, and eight positions covering first to third, Baku underlined how quickly the lead can change when a front-runner’s weekend begins from the midfield and ends near the front.
Verstappen’s takeover is a reminder that the best opportunities to surge in this metric often come when qualifying leaves a driver with work to do. From grid position eight to a finishing position of two, his +6 was cleanly measurable: a proper grid slot, a classified finish, and a result that added directly to the season total. That’s the kind of haul that can swing an ordering when the margin is as tight as +31 versus +28.
Antonelli’s movement points the same way. He’s now third at +23 and was also the biggest mover in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on the day, gaining 11 positions from grid to finish. Even without listing his exact start and finish, that race-wide swing helps explain why his ranking position improved from sixth to third: in a table built on incremental gains, an 11-place leap is a rare accelerator.
Behind them, the top 10 remains fluid. Arvid Lindblad and Carlos Sainz are now listed among the top-10 entrants (Lindblad seventh on +14, Sainz ninth on +12), while Fernando Alonso and Oscar Piastri are the names that fell out of that group after round 15. These are meaningful shifts because being in the top 10 here typically requires repeating recoveries across multiple weekends, not a single flash of progress.
The biggest negative mover is also the clearest cautionary tale about how quickly this ranking can punish a difficult Sunday. Oscar Piastri dropped 10 places in the standings, from 10th to 20th, and his season tally now reads -1. That collapse is consistent with what happened in the race itself: he started third but finished 13th, a net loss of 10 positions despite being classified after 51 laps. In a metric that adds up gains and losses, a single double-digit slide can erase weeks of gradual progress.
At the other end, Nico Hülkenberg produced one of the sharpest climbs through the ranking order. He moved from 20th to 12th (+8 movement in rank) and his season total sits at +8. In Baku, Hülkenberg started 18th and finished 11th, converting that into a seven-place gain that fed directly into his season number. It’s not a podium story, but it is exactly the kind of steady, measurable recovery this table is designed to capture.
Lindblad’s rise is even more striking in the standings: up seven places from 14th to seventh, already on +14 for the season. With the gaps so compressed around the top 10, one strong addition can turn a mid-pack season into a headline-grabbing one, and his jump also reinforces how quickly this ranking can reshuffle outside the top three.
After 15 races completed, the picture is of a ranking that rewards resilience but is fragile to setbacks. Verstappen’s +31 is not an unassailable cushion; it’s only three clear of Lawson, so a single strong recovery elsewhere can flip the lead again. Antonelli’s +23 shows a similar dynamic: he’s close enough to keep pressure on, especially when race-to-race variability produces big opportunities for position gains.
The other storyline is volatility at the edges of the top 10. Sainz and Lindblad being in, with Alonso and Piastri out, shows how quickly the threshold can move. For drivers like Piastri, the road back is also mathematical: climbing from -1 requires more classified races where grid position is converted into forward progress, because a single poor conversion—like third to 13th—can dominate the seasonal balance sheet.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oscar Piastri | McLaren | 10 | 20 | -10 | -1 |
| Nico Hülkenberg | Audi | 20 | 12 | +8 | +8 |
| Arvid Lindblad | RB F1 Team | 14 | 7 | +7 | +14 |
Verstappen’s new lead at +31 is slim enough that Lawson (+28) remains within one strong recovery of taking it back, while Antonelli (+23) has pulled himself into the same conversation. The bigger signal from Baku is how unforgiving the metric can be: Piastri’s slide to -1 shows that one bad grid-to-finish conversion can undo a season’s worth of incremental gains, and it keeps the top 10 threshold in constant motion.