Expected Position
Where did the driver finish compared with where their car should finish? Every car has a natural slot in the field; beating that slot earns credit, falling short costs it. Car failures are handled so a driver is never punished for machinery that broke underneath them.
This season, Max Verstappen leads Expected Position: 10.00 against the grid, across 11 rated races. The single best Expected Position performance of the year belongs to Lewis Hamilton — 9.9 at the ESP.
How the grid reads on Expected Position in 2026
what the season table actually saysAt the top. Max Verstappen leads Expected Position on 10.00, 0.89 clear of Lando Norris on 9.11. 23 drivers have enough running to be rated, and the field runs from 10.00 down to 6.29 — a spread of 3.71 of a grade point.
The speciality. Arvid Lindblad is P14 on Expected Position but only P21 on The Index overall — 7 places better here than at everything else put together. On this one measure, this is what they are for.
The soft spot. George Russell runs the other way: P13 on The Index but only P23 here, 10 places worse. A driver good enough to rank high overall is giving something back on expected position.
Same car, same measure. Team mates share machinery, so the gap between them is as close to a clean read as expected position gets. The tightest pair on the grid is Audi — Nico Hulkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto separated by just 0.05. The widest is Mercedes, where Kimi Antonelli is 2.81 ahead of George Russell.
What this number is not. Expected Position is one of nine independent measures, and a driver can lead it while sitting mid-table overall — the season grade in the last column is this metric alone, not a summary of the driver. It is also a rating against the rest of the grid this season, not against history: it says who is doing this best right now, not who has ever done it best.
Season ranking
click a round to sort · each round on its own, Season against the grid| Pos | Driver | MEL | SHA | SUZ | MIA | CAN | MON | ESP | AUT | GBR | SPA | HUN | NED | ITA | Season |
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A race grade rates one afternoon; a season grade rates a driver across the year against the rest of the grid. They answer different questions, so they are not versions of the same number and the season figure is not the row added up. – = not classified that race (insufficient running, or the situation made the metric unmeasurable — the driver is never penalised for it), and never counted towards the season; the championship still accumulates per-race points.