Race Pace
The heart of the index. Race pace with the car’s baseline performance stripped out — what is left is the time the driver found (or lost) that the machinery alone does not explain.
This season, Max Verstappen leads Race Pace: 9.84 against the grid, across 11 rated races. The single best Race Pace performance of the year belongs to Gabriel Bortoleto — 9.8 at the MIA.
How the grid reads on Race Pace in 2026
what the season table actually saysAt the top. Max Verstappen leads Race Pace on 9.84, 0.21 clear of Charles Leclerc on 9.63. 23 drivers have enough running to be rated, and the field runs from 9.84 down to 6.81 — a spread of 3.03 of a grade point.
The speciality. Lance Stroll is P10 on Race Pace but only P15 on The Index overall — 5 places better here than at everything else put together. On this one measure, this is what they are for.
The soft spot. Liam Lawson runs the other way: P14 on The Index but only P23 here, 9 places worse. A driver good enough to rank high overall is giving something back on race pace.
Same car, same measure. Team mates share machinery, so the gap between them is as close to a clean read as race pace gets. The tightest pair on the grid is Haas F1 Team — Oliver Bearman and Esteban Ocon separated by just 0.21. The widest is Mercedes, where Kimi Antonelli is 1.37 ahead of George Russell.
What this number is not. Race Pace 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.