2026 F1 Driver Standings: Antonelli Leads on 242, and Piastri Sits 7th

Summary: Who leads the 2026 F1 driver standings right now?

• After the Dutch Grand Prix on 23 August 2026 (round 12 of 23), Kimi Antonelli leads on 242 points for Mercedes, in only his second season and at 19 years old.
• George Russell and Lewis Hamilton are tied on 183. Russell holds second on countback thanks to two sprint wins, in Australia and Canada.
• Oscar Piastri, third in last year's championship, sits seventh on 104 points, 55 behind team mate Lando Norris.
• Max Verstappen is sixth on 112 points and has yet to win a race in 2026. He signed a Red Bull extension through 2030 on 20 August anyway.
• There is exactly one rookie on the grid, Arvid Lindblad, and his 23 points put him ahead of six far more experienced drivers.

2026 F1 driver standings after 12 rounds

The table below reflects the official formula1.com classification as checked on 25 August 2026. Eleven races remain and the next one is the Italian Grand Prix on 6 September, so anyone reading this later should expect the numbers to have moved.

Below the top ten: Lindblad 23, Colapinto 19, Bearman 18, Bortoleto 10, Hulkenberg 6, Sainz 6, Albon 5, Ocon 3, Alonso 3, with Tsunoda, Stroll, Bottas and Perez still scoreless.

Only the win counts confirmed by official sources are listed here. Antonelli has six, including a run of five in a row, and Norris took Hungary and the Netherlands back to back. Verstappen has no wins and no poles from twelve starts.

In the constructors' table it reads Mercedes 425, Ferrari 338, McLaren 263, Red Bull 186, then Racing Bulls 66, Alpine 63, Haas 21, Audi 16, Williams 11 and Aston Martin 3. Cadillac, the eleventh team, is still on zero. For who sits in which car, see the F1 2026 team lineup guide.

A 19-year-old is running the championship

Antonelli became the youngest points leader in the history of the drivers' championship at 19 years and 216 days. At Monaco on 7 June he started from pole, led every lap, set the fastest lap and took a grand slam, which also made him the youngest winner the race has ever had.

The Mercedes W17 is plainly the car that adapted best to the 2026 rules, and an 87-point constructors' cushion over Ferrari says a lot of those 242 points came from the machinery. What complicates that reading is Russell, who has the same car and 183 points.

Why Piastri has fallen to seventh

A driver who finished third last season and led the championship for much of it is now seventh, 55 points down on a team mate in identical equipment. Three explanations circulate.

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella points at driving style. The 2026 cars reward an aggressive approach that tolerates a moving rear end, which cuts against Piastri's smooth, precise way of driving. A second line of analysis says McLaren's early aerodynamic concept was wrong and the mid-development pivot cost Piastri more than it cost Norris. Juan Pablo Montoya offers a third reading: the psychological hangover from losing the title at the final round of 2025.

None of these rule each other out, and the car is clearly not the problem on its own, given Norris is fourth with two wins in the last two rounds. If you arrived here looking for what Piastri actually earns, the F1 driver salary rankings is the page you want instead.

Verstappen is sixth and just signed until 2030

Verstappen has 112 points, four podiums and four retirements from twelve races, with second places in Austria and Hungary as his best results. It is his worst start since his debut year in 2015. Team principal Laurent Mekies conceded after the Chinese Grand Prix that the RB22 had a significant flaw, and Verstappen himself called that weekend a disaster.

His contract carried a performance clause that would have allowed a 2027 move if he sat outside the top two at the summer break, and sixth place kept that door open. He shut it himself on 20 August, days before his home race at Zandvoort, by extending with Red Bull to the end of 2030. He has said he seriously weighed retiring from F1 before signing. The money side of that deal is covered separately in Max Verstappen's salary explained.

One rookie, six scalps

The only true rookie of 2026 is Arvid Lindblad at Racing Bulls: 18 years old, car number 41. He reached Q3 on debut in Australia and finished eighth, making him the third-youngest points scorer in F1 history and the youngest British one. Seven more Q3 appearances followed, along with six consecutive points finishes from Monaco to Hungary.

Twenty-three points does not sound like much until you notice who is below it: Colapinto on 19, Bearman on 18, Bortoleto on 10, Hulkenberg and Sainz on 6, Albon on 5. An 18-year-old in his first season is outscoring Carlos Sainz and Nico Hulkenberg. If the gap in how rookies and veterans are paid is the part that interests you, the F1 driver salary ranking covers it.

The 2025 rookie class in year two

The most brutal thing on this grid is what has happened to the drivers who all arrived together last season.

One of them leads the championship and one of them no longer has a seat. Hadjar's 68 points in a difficult car, against Verstappen's 112 in the same machinery, reads like a verdict Red Bull has already reached internally.

How F1 points are awarded

The scoring system is unchanged for 2026. The top ten finishers score:

Sprint weekends add a separate allocation for the top eight in the sprint race, which is exactly why Russell sits ahead of Hamilton on equal points: two sprint wins to his name. Ties are broken by countback, comparing the number of better finishes each driver has.

How this compares with 2025

Last year's final table makes the current one look stranger still. Norris took the 2025 title with 423 points to Verstappen's 421, a margin of two, even though Verstappen won eight races to Norris's seven. Piastri finished third.

So in twelve months the champion has slipped to fourth, the runner-up to sixth and the third-placed driver to seventh, and last year's rookies moved into the space. That is a plausible outcome in a season where the power units went to a 50:50 hybrid split, DRS was replaced by an overtake mode and the cars lost 10cm of width all at once. Change the regulations and the order changes with them, which 2026 has demonstrated again.

Whether Antonelli's 59-point cushion survives the remaining eleven rounds is the question for the rest of the season.

Sources

• Formula 1 official driver standings