Confused by fleet arena

Something happened today in fleet that I'm not sure is legit, but I'd like to run it past the community to make sure I'm not just salty.

I finally managed to take 1st for the first time ever, displacing our resident kraken with a 160k GP advantage (he's been sat at 1 since the first day I got into the shard in January, there was one guy who could occasionally knock him out but since the last Chimaera event he literally hasn't budged until now): I took this screenshot and did a happy dance:

https://image.ibb.co/dadubJ/Screenshot_20180514_194943_1.png

Note that I am 1, "Thrawn" is 2 and "Tarkin" is 3.

I come back with 3 minutes to go and find that I'm locked in a battle. I assume that QQ is battling me back (not his payout so kind of douchey but there's not much I can do about that). So I refresh away and notice that while my stated rank in the top left corner stays at #1, I have the option to battle QQ who is now apparently at #1. I assume this is because he's literally just won the battle and for some reason my rank needs to refresh so I close fleet and reopen it to find this:

https://image.ibb.co/iDbfGJ/Screenshot_20180514_200144_1.png

Now I'm in 3, Thrawn is 1 and Tarkin is 2!

This makes no sense. The only way for this to happen is if Thrawn and Tarkin BOTH beat me within that 3 minute timeframe. This seems highly implausible to me, especially given that:

It's neither of their payouts

Thrawn literally hasn't budged from 1 for a month so it seems odd that he'd be so eagle-eyed about his spot, especially given that he's in an East Asian guild where the time was 3am

Tarkin has never sniped me before my payout before


Could there be foul play at work or am I just salty?