Starting outside the top 10 again proved decisive at Monza: Max Verstappen’s climb to third added 15 points to flip this ranking’s lead. Behind him, the fight is tight — but Monza was brutal for several of the biggest improvers from earlier rounds.
By Julian Reyes
Max Verstappen is the new leader of the 2026 ‘Points from outside the top 10’ ranking after the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, jumping from third to first with 27. The lead changed hands from Liam Lawson, and it did so in the most on-theme way possible: Verstappen turned a start outside the top 10 into a podium and a big points haul for this metric.
The Monza scoreline that reshaped the top was simple and heavy. Verstappen qualified sixth but started 11th and finished third, banking 15 points from a race that began outside the top 10 — exactly what this ranking isolates. That one recovery is enough to move him ahead of Andrea Kimi Antonelli, now second on 25, leaving a two-point margin at the top that keeps the ranking’s story less about who is “best on Sundays” and more about who can repeatedly dig themselves out of compromised grid slots.
If Verstappen’s Monza surge was the headline, the underlying theme is how narrow the margins remain among the front-runners who have had to fight back from outside the top 10. Antonelli sits just two points back on 25, while Pierre Gasly holds third with 19 — and those numbers matter because this ranking doesn’t reward clean weekends; it rewards damage limitation and opportunism when qualifying (or starting position) leaves you buried.
There are also signs of compression just outside the podium places. George Russell is fourth with 18, and Lando Norris has climbed two places from seventh to fifth, also on 18. Even without needing a long list of examples, the geometry of the table is clear: a single strong recovery drive can swing multiple positions in the ranking, because the totals are built from a subset of races rather than a full-season accumulation.
The sharpest movement was in the wrong direction, underlining how quickly this metric can punish a bad Sunday when you start outside the top 10 but fail to convert it into points. Oliver Bearman suffered the biggest drop among key movers, sliding six places from sixth to 12th with 7 after finishing 15th at Monza. He qualified 12th and started outside the top 10, but with 0 points scored from that compromised start, his earlier returns lost ground in a hurry.
Two other six-place slides tell a similar story at the back end of the ranking. Lance Stroll fell from 15th to 21st on 0, and Sergio Pérez dropped from 16th to 22nd on 0 — both left with no points in this category despite at least one start that made them eligible to be listed in the first place. With the maximum movement magnitude at six places this week, Monza became a reminder that the ‘outside the top 10’ ranking can be volatile: you can’t simply rely on having had a few bad grid spots; you still need to turn them into points.
Monza also reshaped the top 10 membership. Antonelli (25), Russell (18), Oscar Piastri (10) and Lewis Hamilton (8) are now in the top 10 of the ‘Points from outside the top 10’ table, confirming that multiple teams have drivers capable of converting an 11th-or-lower start into tangible returns.
But the flipside is how quickly that access can disappear. Oliver Bearman, Carlos Sainz, Franco Colapinto and Alexander Albon have fallen out of the top 10 entrants list. Bearman’s case is the cleanest illustration because we can trace it directly to Monza: a start outside the top 10, 53 laps completed, a 15th-place finish, and 0 points — the exact opposite of the recovery pattern that put Verstappen into first.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oliver Bearman | Haas F1 Team | 6 | 12 | -6 | 7 |
| Lance Stroll | Aston Martin | 15 | 21 | -6 | 0 |
| Sergio Pérez | Cadillac F1 Team | 16 | 22 | -6 | 0 |
Verstappen’s Monza haul turns this ranking into a two-point fight at the top — 27 plays 25 — and with Gasly on 19 and Russell/Norris on 18, one more high-scoring recovery from outside the top 10 could reshuffle the order again.