Verstappen 2026 Season: Four Second Places Before the Win

The Verstappen 2026 season, measured across the first 15 rounds in GridRaces data, is seven podiums, four second places, three retirements, no pole position and no win. Max Verstappen sat on 151 points, level with Charles Leclerc, with an average grid slot of 6.3. And yet from round 10 onwards only Kimi Antonelli outscored him. Verstappen spent the year losing Saturdays and quietly collecting Sundays, just never the top step. Then came Sepang.

Here is the case that the numbers tell a better story than the win column did.

What did the Verstappen 2026 season look like before Sepang?

Start with what is missing. Through the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, round 15, Verstappen had no pole position and no victory. His best starting slot was second, and his average was 6.3. In Australia he started 20th and still finished sixth with the fastest lap. In Britain he started seventh and finished 20th. This is not a driver cruising on a quick car.

What he did have was podiums: seven of them, split into three thirds (Canada, Belgium, Italy) and four second places (Austria, Hungary, Spain, Azerbaijan). Four runner-up finishes is the kind of record that makes a driver collect silver the way other people collect loyalty-card stamps: steadily, and with a faint look of disbelief at the till.

The cost was the other column. Three retirements (China, Monaco, the Netherlands) wiped out three weekends of points, and the podiums had to make that up.

Why does the Verstappen and Leclerc comparison matter?

Because it is the cleanest illustration of two different seasons arriving at the same place. Verstappen and Leclerc both had 151 points after 15 rounds. Both averaged a fifth-place finish among the races they completed.

The route was different. Leclerc started higher, 4.2 on average against Verstappen's 6.3, and finished about as high. Verstappen started lower and finished on the podium more often, seven times to Leclerc's four. Over the same 15 rounds Leclerc had two retirements to Verstappen's three. Qualifying gave one of them the better Saturday. Race craft gave the other the better Sundays.

Across the races he finished, Verstappen gained 1.5 places from grid to flag on average, more than any of the other five drivers in the top six on points. Norris came next at 1.2, then Antonelli at 0.7. Leclerc lost 0.7 on average and Russell 0.5. That 1.5 includes the Australian climb from 20th and the British slide from seventh, so it is a blunt number and not a promise. But it points the same way as everything else.

Was Verstappen really the second-fastest scorer since Belgium?

On points, yes. Split the season at round 9. From rounds 1 to 9 Verstappen scored 67 points. From rounds 10 to 15 he scored 84, in six races instead of nine. That is the second-highest total in the stretch, behind only Antonelli's 118 and just ahead of Norris's 83.

Look at who sits below him. Russell scored 74, Leclerc 64 and Hamilton 50, with Hamilton and Russell both well off their early-season pace. The grid did not wait for Verstappen to arrive. Some of his rivals slowed down at the same time he sped up.

In that six-round stretch he finished on the podium in five of the six. The exception was a retirement in the Netherlands. His grid slots for the podium finishes were second at Spa, fourth in Hungary, fifth at Monza, third in Spain and eighth in Baku. The finishes came from the race, not the front row.

What is the counter-argument?

The fair objection is that points are a proxy for pace, and a flattering one. Mercedes drivers won 11 of the 15 races, eight of them Antonelli's, and that tells you where the fastest car sat for most of the year. A driver who finishes second behind a faster car is doing his job, but he is not proving he has the pace to beat it.

There is also luck in the retirements-and-recoveries ledger. Rivals' bad days lift anyone who stays out of trouble. Part of the rise from 67 to 84 is Verstappen's own, and part of it is other people's weekends.

Still, a driver who gets 151 points out of a season with no poles and three zeros is converting something. He is not winning on Saturday, so the Sunday has to carry the weight, and for much of the year it did.

What does the Verstappen 2026 season tell us about Singapore?

The Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia at Sepang gave him the win the table said was coming. Formula1.com and Total Motorsport both note that he followed it with the Singapore Sprint victory, started from pole, in a wet race where Russell crashed. That is two wins in a row in the space of a week, from a driver who had none in the previous 15 rounds of our data.

Our read, and it is only a read: the year is no longer about whether Verstappen can win, but whether he can start where he finishes. If Saturday catches up with Sunday, the average-grid-6.3 driver becomes much harder to stop. Sunday's Singapore Grand Prix, on a track where a clean start counts for a lot, is the first real test.

Watch his weekend on GridRaces Telemetry, set your picks for the next race on Predict, and see how the season-long fight is shaping up in your leagues.