Kimi Antonelli’s Monza Masterclass Puts Him 66 Points Clear, but Mercedes Warn the Title Fight Is Far From Over

• Kimi Antonelli now leads George Russell by 66 points, Lewis Hamilton by 76 and Lando Norris by 96 with 10 rounds left in 2026
• Toto Wolff says Mercedes will not bring a new upgrade until Malaysia, leaving the team short of Monza-level pace at this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix in Madrid
• McLaren boss Andrea Stella points to Malaysia, Austin and Brazil as tracks better suited to the MCL40 than the tight, twisty new Madrid circuit

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Mercedes Just Handed Antonelli a Cushion. Now Comes the Hard Part

Kimi Antonelli’s run from 19th on the grid to victory at Monza pushed his championship lead out to 66 points over teammate George Russell, 76 over Lewis Hamilton and 96 over Lando Norris. Ten rounds remain, starting with this weekend’s inaugural Spanish Grand Prix at Madrid’s new Madring circuit.

The 20 year old is now the favourite to become the youngest world champion in F1 history. His win was the farthest back anyone has ever come from to win at Monza, and the first time an Italian has won the race in 60 years. But Monza’s long straights flattered Mercedes in a way few other tracks on the 2026 calendar will, and the team principals left Italy with very different messages about what comes next.

Monza Flattered a Car That Isn’t the Fastest Everywhere

Monza rewards raw straight line speed more than almost any other circuit on the calendar, and Mercedes’ power unit deployment, an area the FIA does not directly measure, gave Antonelli and Russell an edge that had not shown up so clearly all year. The FIA ruled earlier this season that Red Bull’s engine is the strongest overall, which makes Mercedes’ Monza pace a deployment story rather than a raw power one.

“I’m quite happy, first of all, that we were able to perform in Monza like we did, because we weren’t sure,” said Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff. “Ferrari brought an engine upgrade and others on the chassis side, and this is a development race. But we have to consider the fact that Monza is an outlier on the track. It’s on one end, and then there is Monaco on the other.”

Only Baku and Las Vegas feature comparable full throttle stretches later in the season, and both circuits carry far more corners than Monza. Madrid, by contrast, is a complete unknown: a 5.4km, 22-turn layout mixing street and permanent circuit characteristics, with a heavy corner count that should suit cars strong through the twisty sections rather than in a straight line.

Wolff Warns Mercedes Won’t Have the Upgrade to Match Monza

Mercedes are not planning to introduce new parts until the Malaysian Grand Prix in October, and Wolff was blunt about what that means for the immediate future.

“We must not get ahead of ourselves now, thinking, ‘well, we can wait for the upgrade until Malaysia’,” Wolff said. “We know that it’s going to be a big fight in Madrid. Our car hasn’t got the performance levels that it has in Monza for the next race in Madrid. We know that our upgrades would help a lot in Madrid but we haven’t got them. So we just need to do our best and that could mean that some of the race weekends, not winning, but just scoring points.”

McLaren, meanwhile, arrive in Madrid off the back of back-to-back wins for Norris in Hungary and the Netherlands before a difficult Monza where the MCL40’s straight line weakness left both cars starting P6 and P8. Stella does not expect Madrid to play to his car’s strengths either, but for different reasons than Mercedes.

“I think our tracks will be more the likes of Malaysia, Austin, Brazil,” Stella said. “I think where we have some long corners, the car seems to express its potential well. We have some new upgrades that we will take to Baku, but we still think that tracks like Baku and Madrid where you have to be very precise with the trajectory, short corners, maybe they don’t play to the best of our car. In Zandvoort and Hungary we were in a position to win races, and here, while we were not, we know that it’s a special race. Drag will be less important in Madrid. But from a championship point of view, I think we have to remain very realistic, don’t get conditioned by looking at the classification, just focus on one race at a time.”

A 20 Year Old Carrying the Points Lead Into Uncharted Territory

Antonelli is only 20 and in his second full season, a stage of a career where most drivers are still making expensive mistakes. He has not made one yet in 2026, but the remaining 10 races bring closer, less predictable fields, and a rainy Sunday or a lost slipstream battle could change everything quickly.

“Definitely it’s been a very strong year so far, but still many races left and so, still anything can happen,” Antonelli said. “And we’ve seen how things can swing very quickly. So, on my side, as I said many times, just take it race by race, focus on things that I can control and just maximise every opportunity I get. In Monza we were fastest, but we never know. We might go to another track and all of a sudden, McLaren is the fastest, or Ferrari is up there, or even Red Bull, with Max.”

Russell faces a tougher version of the same problem. He has the same Mercedes as Antonelli but has not matched his teammate’s pace this year, and that gap is proving harder to close than the raw points difference suggests. If McLaren or Ferrari find sustained form over the closing 10 rounds and Antonelli slips off the podium even once or twice, both Hamilton and Norris are close enough to gain serious ground in a single weekend.

Ten Circuits, One Champion in Waiting

The remaining calendar reads like a tour of every kind of circuit Formula 1 has to offer. Madrid arrives first with its unknown, corner-heavy layout, followed by Azerbaijan’s chaotic street track, then the more traditional venues of Malaysia, Singapore, Austin and Mexico. Brazil, Las Vegas, Qatar and Abu Dhabi close out the year.

Each of those tracks tests something different: traction, downforce, tyre management, and, at Baku and Las Vegas, straight line speed of the sort that suited Mercedes so well at Monza. Antonelli’s rivals will get more chances to find an equaliser than they had at Monza, where the demands of the track happened to line up almost perfectly with what Mercedes does best.

Wolff, for his part, is describing the run-in as one where results will not always be spectacular. “It’s motor racing. It’s a technical sport. Things can break, accidents can happen and that’s why we have to do our best job for both drivers,” he said. “Continue to bring our best game.”

Formula 1 heads to Madrid, Azerbaijan, Malaysia, Singapore, the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Las Vegas, Qatar and Abu Dhabi to close out the season. Antonelli’s cushion is real. Whether it survives contact with tracks that suit his car far less than Monza did is the question the next 10 weekends will answer.

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Written by

Jack Renn

Jack Renn is an editor at F1 Chronicle and a veteran motorsport journalist with 25 years of experience covering Formula 1 and international motorsport. A member of the Association Internationale de la Presse Sportive (AIPS), the global body representing accredited sports journalists, Jack has spent his career reporting from paddocks and press rooms across the F1 calendar. His work spans race analysis, technical insight, and in-depth features, giving readers authoritative coverage grounded in decades of firsthand experience at the highest level of the sport.

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