Round 15 at the Baku City Circuit flipped the top of the race teammate head-to-head table, with Max Verstappen moving into P1 on 11–4. Big swings further down included a Williams reshuffle that sent Carlos Sainz into the top 10 and pushed Alexander Albon the other way.
By Elena Marsh
Max Verstappen is the new leader of the 2026 Teammate head-to-head (race) ranking after the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, moving from P2 to P1 with an 11–4 record. That change matters because this table is built purely on who finishes ahead of their teammate in races where a team has exactly two starters — and after 15 races completed, Verstappen now owns the strongest win total in that internal metric.
The shift is amplified by the shape of the top group: Fernando Alonso sits P2 on the same 11–4 record, and Sergio Pérez is P3, also on 11–4. With all three separated only by the ranking’s tie-break process, Baku didn’t just swap the name at the top — it tightened the whole fight for the No.1 slot into a fine-margin contest where each intra-team beat can reorder the podium places of the ranking.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli was the previous leader, but Baku was a momentum check in this specific measure: he dropped three places from P1 to P4, now 10–5. The raw record still reads strongly — 10 head-to-head wins from 15 eligible races — yet the change in rank underlines how little slack there is when others are stacking 11 wins.
What makes the drop more intriguing is that it came on a weekend where Antonelli still produced a notable race result: from P16 on the grid to P5 at the flag, scoring 10 points and finishing all 51 laps. He was also the biggest mover of the whole race, gaining 11 positions, a reminder that this ranking can punish or reward drivers independently of broader race narrative — it only cares about the final classified order versus the teammate.
The most dramatic climb belonged to Carlos Sainz, who surged four places from P11 to P7 and, in the process, became a new top-10 entrant. His record now stands at 9–6 for Williams, a line that reflects consistent marginal wins in the intra-garage comparison even when the overall result is modest — in Baku he finished P10, collecting 1 point after starting P14.
At the same time, the other side of that Williams story moved sharply in the opposite direction. Alexander Albon fell three spots from P15 to P18 and sits at 6–9, a swing that widened the internal separation between the two Williams drivers in this ranking. It’s a neat illustration of what this metric captures: not a team’s absolute ceiling, but the week-to-week ability to be the better half of a two-car operation.
Baku also nudged other reference points in the middle of the table. Esteban Ocon climbed from P16 to P14 and now holds a 7–8 record for Haas F1 Team, still slightly underwater on win-loss but trending toward parity as the sample reaches 15 races.
There was turnover at the edge of the elite group too: Gabriel Bortoleto dropped out of the top 10, while Sainz’s jump took him in. In a season where the very top is tied on 11–4, those smaller threshold changes matter because they signal how quickly head-to-head ‘form’ can translate into big positional shifts, even without any streak narrative driving it.
| Driver | Team | Before | After | Δ | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carlos Sainz | Williams | 11 | 7 | +4 | 9–6 |
| Andrea Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | 1 | 4 | -3 | 10–5 |
| Alexander Albon | Williams | 15 | 18 | -3 | 6–9 |
With Verstappen, Alonso and Pérez all on 11–4, the lead of the teammate head-to-head (race) ranking is effectively being decided on fine margins and tie-breaks. Antonelli’s 10–5 keeps him close enough that a single swing can rewrite the top four again, while the Williams split between Sainz (9–6) and Albon (6–9) is becoming one of the clearer internal gaps as the season passes the 15-race mark.