Formula 1 Championship

State of the championship

Andrea Kimi Antonelli is running away with this. After 13 rounds the Mercedes rookie sits on 267 points with seven wins to his name and the gap to his own team-mate George Russell in P2 is 66 points. That’s not a tight championship. That’s a teenager putting a veteran in his pocket.

Russell has been the second-best driver on the grid by most measures, 201 points and two wins is a serious campaign. But every time he’s closed the gap Antonelli has answered. The Italian Grand Prix at Monza, Round 13, was the latest example: Antonelli on home soil, in front of the tifosi who were supposed to be cheering Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc across the road at Ferrari. He didn’t care. He took what he needed.

Hamilton sits third on 191 points with one win. Ferrari have 346 points as a constructor, second in the teams’ standings, but the driver championship is slipping away from them. Leclerc on 155 points is fifth overall. The gap between Hamilton and Antonelli is 76 points. With a handful of rounds left that’s not impossible to close, but it requires Antonelli to stop scoring. He hasn’t shown any sign of that.

Lando Norris and McLaren are the other story. Norris is fourth on 171 points with two wins, and Oscar Piastri is seventh on 116. The gap between them inside the garage is growing and McLaren’s 287 constructor points put them 59 behind Ferrari in P2. The midfield is its own war entirely. Max Verstappen has 127 points and zero wins. For Verstappen, zero wins after 13 rounds is the story of the season.

Projection

Antonelli is averaging roughly 20.5 points per round across 13 races. With the title gap at 66 over Russell and 76 over Hamilton and assuming a similar scoring rate for all three, Antonelli could realistically clinch the drivers’ championship somewhere around Round 17 or 18, depending on sprint weekend outcomes. The one upset scenario that makes sense: Russell wins four of the next five rounds while Antonelli hits a mechanical streak. Unlikely, but Mercedes reliability deciding a Mercedes title fight would be a very F1 way for this to unravel.

What to watch

• Antonelli vs Russell inside Mercedes: Seven wins to two in favour of the rookie. Russell is a former world champion-level talent being outscored by his 19-year-old team-mate. How that dynamic plays out in the final rounds, particularly if Antonelli is close to clinching, will tell us a lot about how Mercedes manage their garage.
• Verstappen’s winless season: Max Verstappen on 127 points and no wins after 13 rounds is genuinely shocking. Red Bull have zero wins as a constructor. Whether he can end that drought before the season closes is the biggest individual redemption arc left on the calendar.
• Ferrari’s constructor fight with McLaren: Ferrari lead McLaren by 59 points in the constructors’ standings. McLaren have two drivers scoring consistently and Ferrari’s points are unevenly split between Hamilton and Leclerc. One bad double-DNF for Ferrari could flip P2 before the final round.
• Norris vs Piastri inside McLaren: Norris leads Piastri 171 to 116 inside the same garage. That 55-point gap has widened across the second half of the season. Piastri needs wins and Norris knows it. Expect team orders to become a conversation if McLaren’s constructor position gets tight.
• The rookie class beyond Antonelli: Isack Hadjar at Red Bull has 71 points and is eighth overall. Liam Lawson has 51 at RB. Hadjar in particular is quietly building a case that Red Bull have found something in their junior programme again. Watch how that plays out against the backdrop of Verstappen’s struggles.