Mercedes star faces final Verstappen test over last six races
Kimi Antonelli is on the verge of ending a 73-year wait for an Italian Formula 1 world champion. Not since Alberto Ascari’s triumph in 1953 has the sport crowned a driver from Italy, and in only his second season the Mercedes driver holds a commanding lead with six rounds still to run. The question now is less whether he can win the championship than how highly it will be judged against the sport’s benchmark, Max Verstappen.
Antonelli’s Title Charge Ends a 73-Year Italian Wait
After the Singapore Grand Prix, round 17 of 23, Antonelli leads the 2026 drivers’ standings on 340 points. His Mercedes teammate George Russell is second on 238, a gap of 102 points, while Verstappen is fourth on 221 for Red Bull. Antonelli has won eight races this season, and his run included five consecutive victories in China, Japan, Miami, Canada and Monaco.
Mercedes has been the dominant force as a team as well. The constructors’ standings show the Silver Arrows on 578 points with eleven race wins, 134 clear of Ferrari. That context matters, because it frames both the scale of Antonelli’s achievement and the debate that surrounds it.
Antonelli vs Russell: Rare Speed and Remarkable Consistency
The title fight inside Mercedes has been decided by consistency as much as by raw pace. Russell has been a serious threat, winning the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, the Austrian Grand Prix and, most recently, the race in Baku. Even so, Antonelli has repeatedly found points on difficult weekends, and that habit has steadily stretched the gap.
The clearest example came in Azerbaijan. Antonelli crashed out of qualifying and started 16th, yet recovered to finish fifth and keep the championship lead, scoring 10 points on a weekend that could have been damaging. Russell took the victory, but the margin between the two Mercedes drivers shrank by only 15 points. In the Singapore sprint, Russell took the lead from Verstappen at the start and then crashed on the second lap, while Antonelli finished fourth and extended his advantage.
The growth of that lead tells its own story. After five rounds Antonelli was 43 points clear of Russell. He arrived at Monza with a 59-point advantage and left with 267 points to Russell’s 201, a 66-point gap. After Baku the margin stood at 66 again, with Antonelli on 302, and it has since stretched to 102. Few championship leads grow so steadily while a teammate is winning races.
Monza Masterclass and Madrid Win Define the Season
If one drive captures the essence of Antonelli’s year, it came at his home race. He started the Italian Grand Prix at Monza from the back of the grid because of a power unit penalty, then worked through the field and passed Russell for the lead in the closing stages. The result was a victory in front of the Italian crowd and one of the standout performances of the campaign.
Antonelli’s win at Monza has been described as arguably the drive of the year, and it is easy to see why. Starting 19th on the grid and finishing first is rare in modern Formula 1, where overtaking opportunities are limited and strategy rarely allows such a recovery.
He followed that with a win in the inaugural Madrid Grand Prix, finishing ahead of Verstappen. Taken together, those two results show a driver who can win from deep in the field and also defeat the four-time champion in a straight fight, which is exactly the kind of evidence those assessing his credentials will look for.
The Verstappen Surge Changes the Narrative
The picture has become more complicated in recent weeks. Verstappen has won the last two races, and over the last four race weekends he has scored 94 of the 108 points available, gaining 21 points on Antonelli in the process. During the same stretch Antonelli took one win and two other podiums, so his results have remained strong, but he has no longer been the one setting the pace.
Analysis of the season has pointed out that Mercedes’ technical advantage allowed Antonelli to build a large lead early, and that the team has been less dominant as the year has gone on. Antonelli himself has been candid about the challenge ahead, acknowledging that facing Verstappen would be “very scary”. That honesty may be the most revealing sign of how seriously he takes the benchmark he is about to measure himself against.
Verstappen’s climb is striking when set against the earlier stages of the season. After Monza he was sixth in the championship on 127 points, and he now has 221 in fourth place. That rise of 94 points in a handful of rounds shows how quickly his year has turned, and it explains why attention has shifted from whether Antonelli will win the title to how convincingly he will answer the Red Bull driver himself.
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What the Final Six Races Could Decide
With a 102-point cushion and six rounds left, Antonelli is in a position of real strength, and the championship itself looks to be heading his way. What remains open is the narrative. A title built on an early lead is one thing; a title confirmed by beating Verstappen on equal terms is another.
For Italy, the milestone is already enormous. A first world champion since Ascari would end more than seven decades of waiting and give the country a new face at the top of the sport. For Antonelli, the remaining races offer something just as valuable: the chance to turn a dominant points tally into a definitive argument that he belongs alongside the sport’s benchmark.
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