It takes a fair bit of imagination to find any real drama left in the 2026 Formula 1 World Championship. After 14 grands prix, Kimi Antonelli leads George Russell by 81 points, Lewis Hamilton by 101 and Lando Norris by 106.
In absolute terms, the biggest deficit any driver has ever overturned was the 46-point gap Max Verstappen faced to Charles Leclerc in 2022. That, however, was after just the third race of the season in Melbourne. By the end of the year, Verstappen’s second world title was a comfortable affair and he clinched it with 454 points to Leclerc’s 308.
In relative terms, James Hunt’s comeback in the 1976 season – immortalised in the Hollywood blockbuster Rush – was arguably even more impressive. His biggest deficit to Niki Lauda was “only” 35 points, but a grand prix victory was worth just nine points at the time, compared with 25 today. Scaling Hunt’s deficit proportionally based on the points awarded for a win, those 35 points would equate to roughly 97 points under the current system.
Probably only eight grands prix rather than nine
What remains unclear this season is how many race weekends will actually take place. Given the geopolitical situation, it currently appears unlikely that Qatar on 29 November and Abu Dhabi on 6 December will go ahead. There are growing indications that one or both events could be cancelled, with Imola instead hosting a replacement season finale.
In that case, Antonelli’s rivals would have eight race weekends left to turn the championship around – eight weekends in which a driver could theoretically score a maximum of 208 points: eight grand prix victories worth 25 points each, plus another eight points from the F1 Sprint in Singapore.
Granted, Verstappen showed as recently as the 2025 season that even an almost hopeless situation can still turn into a genuine title fight if a driver goes on a winning streak. But if anyone is on a winning streak right now, it is Antonelli – and the prospect of one of his rivals suddenly sweeping everything before him appears highly unlikely.
“Kimi just needs to do what he’s doing. I mean, it’s fantastic”, Verstappen said after Antonelli’s latest victory at the Spanish Grand Prix in Madrid. “So, it’s working really well. He should not stress about it too much, which I don’t think he is. He’s just delivering, he’s confident, he’s getting more and more experience.
“He’s still young, he’s still very early in his career, but he’s flying and it’s just working. So he shouldn’t overcomplicate things. He’s not doing that. He has a lot of good people around him that know what he needs. So, it’s all working well.”
The four-time world champion is presumably referring to Antonelli’s father Marco, who accompanies him around the world; his team principal Toto Wolff, who is trying to manage the pressure without letting it boil over; and race engineer Peter Bonnington, who knows from his years with Hamilton what it takes to win championships and who, even in chaotic situations, always projects the calm a Formula 1 youngster needs.
Can Lando Norris chase down Kimi Antonelli?
Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images
Form guide: Is Norris Antonelli’s toughest title rival?
If there is one driver capable of putting Antonelli under pressure at the moment, it is probably defending champion Norris. The McLaren driver won in Budapest before the summer break and then again at Zandvoort, finished fourth at Monza – and without the bad luck of the VSC, he would have taken his third victory in four grands prix in Madrid on Sunday.
But even if Norris were to score all 208 points theoretically still available – something that is extremely unlikely to happen in reality – a string of fourth-place finishes would be enough for Antonelli to preserve his championship lead, with just a single grand prix podium among them. That alone shows how academic these calculations have become.
In such a scenario, Antonelli would need exactly 103 more points from now on to seal the championship. For comparison, take his eight worst grand prix results of the 2026 season so far: even from those, he scored 116 points.
Whichever way the numbers are sliced, the conclusion is the same.
George Russell has all b ut conceded defeat to his team-mate
Photo by: Andy Hone/ LAT Images via Getty Images
“He is more than likely to go on and win the championship,” Norris admits.
“He’s leading by 80 points because he’s doing an incredible job. You know, he’s beating a much more experienced team-mate, and a decent team-mate, so I don’t want to give him any advice because he’s doing a scarily good job at, you know, just turned 20. So yeah, pretty phenomenal. I think it’s cool to see someone so young doing such an incredible job.
“He’s been impressive since the first race this year. Very few mistakes. He’s, you know, he’s just not driving like it’s his second year in F1, that’s for sure. So yeah, it’s cool to see and, yeah, I don’t want to… There’s going to be many, many more years of us battling and, yeah, I’m excited for more, hopefully this year, and I’m excited for all of us to race more in the future too.”
Earlier on Sunday evening, Russell – Antonelli’s closest challenger in the 2026 drivers’ standings – had already all but conceded his championship hopes.
“I’m not going to say it’s over”, Russell said after finishing fifth in the Spanish Grand Prix. “But it’s exceptionally unlikely that I’m in this fight.”
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