F1 Fastest Lap 2026: Antonelli Owns Seven of 17 Rounds

Look at the F1 fastest lap 2026 table and Mercedes owns it, Kimi Antonelli above all. Across the 17 rounds in the GridRaces database, from Australia to Singapore, Antonelli set the quickest race lap seven times and Mercedes nine times in total. Ferrari took four. Nobody scores a point for it, which makes it a rare thing in racing: a statistic that mostly measures who had pace left over.

Who leads the F1 fastest lap 2026 table?

Antonelli leads with seven. Charles Leclerc has three, and George Russell, Lando Norris and Max Verstappen have two each. Lewis Hamilton has one. Seventeen rounds, six names.

The table below counts the driver holding the quickest race lap in each of the 17 rounds, taken from GridRaces race results.

Hamilton's single lap came at the Barcelona Grand Prix, which he also won. Verstappen's two came in very different races: from 20th on the grid in Australia, where he finished sixth, and in the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia, where he won from pole.

Does the fastest lap mean the fastest car?

Partly. Antonelli's seven include five race wins, and Russell's two include one. Across the season, the race winner also owned the fastest lap in 8 of 17 rounds. That is the tidy version of the story: the best car wins and then, with the race in hand, shows off.

The untidy version is the interesting one. Antonelli set the fastest lap in the British Grand Prix, starting from pole and finishing 15th. He set it in Austria on the way to third. At the Italian Grand Prix he started 19th, won, and took the fastest lap on the final lap of the race. Norris started 13th in Belgium, finished seventh, and also set his on the last lap. A fastest lap is evidence of capability, not of a good afternoon.

When do drivers set the fastest lap?

Late. Of the 17 fastest laps, 14 came in the final third of the race distance. Six came in the last three laps. Four of them, in Canada, Belgium, Italy and Bahrain, came on the very last lap.

That pattern is what you would expect if tyres and fuel do the work. A car at the end of a race is light, and a driver with a gap behind can sometimes pit for fresh rubber without losing a position. We cannot see strategy intent from lap times alone, so treat this as a pattern and not a motive. But it is hard to read 14 of 17 as coincidence.

The three exceptions are Miami, Barcelona and Singapore, set between 61% and 67% of the way through the race. In Singapore, Leclerc's lap came on lap 41 of 62.

Why is Leclerc's fastest-lap record so odd?

Leclerc has three fastest laps and no race win attached to any of them. They came in Hungary, where he finished fourth, the Netherlands, fifth, and Singapore, second. On this evidence Ferrari can produce speed without always turning it into victory. Hamilton's Barcelona win is the only time a Ferrari driver has combined the two.

That sits oddly beside this weekend. Leclerc topped both Friday practice sessions at the Mexico City Grand Prix, according to Formula1.com and The Race. Friday pace and Sunday results do not always agree, and Ferrari's own table is the proof. For how form has moved over recent rounds, see our driver form analysis.

The counter-argument: is this just strategy noise?

Yes, partly, and it is worth saying so. A fastest lap can be bought with a late stop, which costs a team little when the race is settled and a lot when it is not. Teams that are comfortable can afford the stop; teams in a fight cannot. That would favour the leaders, and it does: Mercedes has won 11 of the 17 races and holds the most fastest laps.

So the statistic over-represents winners. We would rather you read it that way than ignore it. Norris in Belgium shows the exception that keeps the table honest: a car from the middle of the grid, setting the best lap of the day when the flag was about to fall.

Verdict: what the fastest-lap table tells us

Take the table as a measure of spare performance in the final laps, not of the best car on the day. On that reading, Antonelli has had more headroom than anyone, Mercedes has had more than any other team, and Ferrari has shown speed it has not yet converted.

Two things would change that reading. First, a Ferrari fastest lap arriving together with a win, which has happened once this season. Second, a fastest lap set before the final third of a race, which has happened only three times in 17 rounds. Until then, the table says what the standings already suggest: Mercedes has had pace to spare, and everyone else has had to spend theirs.

The data only runs to the Singapore Grand Prix, round 17, so the United States Grand Prix is not in these counts. Once the Mexico City race is in the database, we will add it and see whether Antonelli's lead still looks like headroom or starts to look like habit. You can compare the lap times yourself in telemetry, follow the title fight on the standings page, and browse more numbers in our analysis archive.