Race Start
The launch and the opening rush: net positions and ground gained or lost by the first sector of lap one. Documented car problems at the start are neutralised — only the driver’s part is scored.
This season, Charles Leclerc leads Race Start: 9.68 against the grid, across 13 rated races. The single best Race Start performance of the year belongs to Charles Leclerc — 10.0 at the MEL.
How the grid reads on Race Start in 2026
what the season table actually saysAt the top. Charles Leclerc leads Race Start on 9.68, 0.47 clear of Oscar Piastri on 9.20. 23 drivers have enough running to be rated, and the field runs from 9.68 down to 6.38 — a spread of 3.29 of a grade point.
The speciality. Arvid Lindblad is P5 on Race Start but only P21 on The Index overall — 16 places better here than at everything else put together. On this one measure, this is what they are for.
The soft spot. Max Verstappen runs the other way: P1 on The Index but only P19 here, 18 places worse. A driver good enough to rank high overall is giving something back on race start.
Same car, same measure. Team mates share machinery, so the gap between them is as close to a clean read as race start gets. The tightest pair on the grid is Audi — Gabriel Bortoleto and Nico Hulkenberg separated by just 0.06. The widest is Ferrari, where Charles Leclerc is 1.64 ahead of Lewis Hamilton.
What this number is not. Race Start 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.