Antonelli Closes on Title as Gasly Abuse Claim Casts Shadow Over Mexico

Andrea Kimi Antonelli heads to this weekend’s Mexico City Grand Prix 123 points clear in the drivers’ championship after converting pole into victory at the United States Grand Prix on Sunday. Austin was his ninth win of the season, and five rounds remain. The title is not yet his, but the conversation around Mercedes has already moved to the other side of the garage, where George Russell has been explaining a difficult year. Behind both of them, a far less predictable contest has formed for second place.

Antonelli’s lead and the arithmetic of inevitability

Antonelli’s position is close to unassailable. He has 365 points to Russell’s 242. Five Grands Prix are left, worth 125 points to a driver who won every one of them. Russell’s mathematical route to the title therefore requires something close to a clean sweep of the remaining races, with Antonelli scoring almost nothing. Nobody inside Mercedes is planning for that scenario.

What makes the campaign remarkable is its context. This is only Antonelli’s second season in Formula 1. Twelve months ago he was a rookie in Lewis Hamilton’s old seat, learning the job in public. Now he has nine wins from 18 rounds, and Mercedes have 12 victories between their two drivers. At 20, he would become the youngest world champion in the sport’s history, comfortably beating the record Sebastian Vettel set in 2010.

Daniel Ricciardo has offered an interesting reading of how this has happened. Speaking to Motorsport.com and Autosport, he argued that “ignorance is a superpower” for Antonelli, meaning that his youth and lack of scar tissue have allowed him to drive without the doubts that accumulate over a long career. It is a generous and perceptive point. Experienced drivers carry memories of the races that went wrong, the cars that bit them and the seasons that slipped away. A 20-year-old in a championship-winning car has fewer reasons to hesitate.

A lead that also reflects the machinery

It would be unfair to reduce Antonelli’s season to the car, but impossible to ignore it. Mercedes lead the constructors’ standings on 607 points, 133 clear of Ferrari. The true measure of his year is what separates him from Russell in identical equipment, and that gap is 123 points. Russell has won three races. He is a proven Grand Prix winner and a driver Mercedes trusted to lead the team after Hamilton left. Being beaten this comprehensively by a team-mate who is only in his second season says as much about Antonelli’s level as about any shortfall on Russell’s side.

Four drivers, nine points: the fight for second

The championship may be settled soon, but the battle for runner-up is genuinely open. Here is the order behind Antonelli:

Position	Driver	Team	Points	Gap to 2nd
2	George Russell	Mercedes	242	–
3	Lewis Hamilton	Ferrari	241	1
4	Max Verstappen	Red Bull	236	6
5	Charles Leclerc	Ferrari	233	9
6	Lando Norris	McLaren	211	31

Four drivers from three teams are covered by nine points, with Norris close enough to profit from a bad weekend for any of them.

Russell’s own diagnosis

Russell has spoken this week, in comments reported by Crash.net, about the two main factors he believes have held him back in 2026. His willingness to address his form openly is to his credit. Drivers in his position often retreat into generalities; Russell has instead engaged with the question.

Austin underlined why that question keeps being asked. He started sixth and finished eighth, collecting four points while his team-mate took 25. The result cost him most of his cushion in the runner-up fight, and Hamilton’s fourth place brought the Ferrari driver within a single point.

Ferrari’s growing threat

Russell’s own preview of Mexico will not have reassured him. In comments reported by PlanetF1, he suggested Ferrari could hold an advantage at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez. On Austin’s evidence, the Scuderia arrive in form. Leclerc climbed from fourth to second and Hamilton from fifth to fourth. Ferrari were the only team to put both cars in the top four.

Mexico City is unlike anywhere else on the calendar. At well over 2,000 metres above sea level, the thin air reduces downforce and drag and makes cooling harder for both power units and brakes. Teams run maximum-downforce wings and still find the cars sliding around. Some cars cope with those compromises far better than others, so the outcome is often less predictable than form elsewhere would suggest. If Russell is right about a Ferrari edge, Hamilton and Leclerc could leave Mexico in second and third.

Red Bull’s radio problem

Verstappen, six points behind Russell, finished third in Austin from second on the grid, while Isack Hadjar dropped from third to sixth. Both Red Bull drivers have been suffering from team radio problems, and Verstappen has given an updated view on the issue, according to PlanetF1. He has also had to clarify an “average” comment he made after a race he found hard going, even with a podium at the end of it.

The radio matter sounds trivial but is not. Under the 2026 regulations, with their far greater reliance on electrical energy, drivers depend heavily on their engineers for deployment and harvesting instructions over a lap and a stint. A driver who cannot hear his engineer clearly is making those decisions with less information than his rivals. Red Bull cannot afford that handicap, because their constructors’ fight is as tight as it gets: they are level with McLaren on 355 points for third.

Ben Sulayem’s 13,000 figure and the abuse that will not go away

The most troubling story of the week has nothing to do with lap times. FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem has claimed, as reported by RaceFans, that Pierre Gasly received 13,000 death threats after the Spanish Grand Prix. PlanetF1 has also covered the claim and the reaction to it.

The number comes from the FIA president rather than from independent verification, and it should be read in that light. Even a fraction of that figure would be appalling. Formula 1 has been here before. Nicholas Latifi received death threats after his crash at the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, which became central to the title decider. Stewards and officials have spoken about abuse following contentious decisions. The FIA launched its “Drive It Out” campaign in 2023 for precisely this reason.

What has changed is scale. The sport’s audience has grown enormously over the past decade, much of it online, and the same platforms that brought in new fans have made it trivially easy to abuse a driver directly and anonymously. A governing body can condemn the abuse, publicise it and work with platforms on reporting. It cannot police the internet on its own.

Gasly is having a solid season for Alpine. He is tenth in the standings on 42 points and scored again in Austin, and he deserves to be discussed for that. Ben Sulayem was right to raise the issue in public. The next useful step is evidence of action with the platforms involved, so that a statistic like this produces consequences rather than just headlines.

Alonso, Sainz and the view from the back

A sharper debate has broken out among the drivers themselves. Fernando Alonso has criticised the standard of driving towards the back of the field, in language reported as “low quality”. Carlos Sainz, his compatriot and long-time friend, has pushed back, according to RacingNews365.

The context explains the frustration on both sides. Austin was a bruising race for both men’s teams. Alonso started 12th and finished 16th, a lap down. Sainz was 18th, also lapped, with his Williams team-mate Alexander Albon 17th. Aston Martin have seven points all season and Williams 12. When cars are this evenly matched and this far from the points, every position becomes a fight, and fights at close quarters produce contact and complaints.

The 2026 rules add a further layer. With so much performance tied to electrical deployment, one car harvesting while another deploys can create closing speeds that drivers simply did not face in recent seasons. Judging an overtake or a defence has become harder, and the margins for error are thinner.

Alonso, a two-time world champion with more Grand Prix starts than anyone, has earned the right to an opinion on racecraft. Sainz is equally entitled to defend a group of drivers that includes himself. The useful version of this argument belongs in the drivers’ briefing with the race director, where it can shape how incidents are judged. Played out in the media, it risks hardening into a grievance between two drivers who usually see eye to eye.

Pérez’s homecoming and a driver market in motion

Sergio Pérez arrives at his home race with his future settled. Cadillac have confirmed him on the grid until 2029, a contract that offers stability to a new team still seeking its first point. Motorsport.com reports that Pérez has praised the impact of Colton Herta while insisting he will have no say over who partners him in 2027.

That last point matters. Pérez is the experienced figurehead of a start-up team, and drivers in that position sometimes gain influence over line-ups. By ruling himself out of the decision, he leaves Cadillac’s management free to choose between continuity with Valtteri Bottas and promoting Herta, an American talent whose selection would carry obvious commercial appeal. Austin was a reminder of how far Cadillac still have to travel: Pérez finished 19th, a lap down, and Bottas retired.

Elsewhere, the market is less comfortable. Esteban Ocon, dropped by Haas, has told Crash.net about a private conversation with Hamilton regarding his future. Ocon finished 14th in Austin, and with few vacancies left, his search for a 2027 seat will be one of the quieter stories of the coming weeks.

Hamilton himself, meanwhile, has suggested he could race on into the 2030s, while acknowledging there is one red line that would make him stop. Third in the standings and a point behind Russell, he is not driving like someone thinking about retirement.

Rookies, a tied fight and Cadillac’s first-point hunt

• Rookie day in Mexico City. According to RacingNews365, 10 rookies will take part in first practice, almost half the field. Teams must give rookies at least two FP1 outings per car each season, and the calendar is running out, so expect race drivers to lose valuable set-up time on a circuit where the thin air already makes preparation difficult.
• Red Bull v McLaren for third. The two teams are tied on 355 points. Norris and Oscar Piastri finished fifth and seventh in Austin, so McLaren scored 16 points to Red Bull’s 23. Hadjar’s form could decide this one.
• RB’s points haul. Liam Lawson’s ninth place took him to 77 points, and Arvid Lindblad sits 11th on 38. With 102 points, RB hold a commanding lead over Alpine in fifth.
• Cadillac’s search for a first point. Pérez will have home support in Mexico, but the team’s results so far suggest a top-10 finish would need attrition ahead.
• Ferrari’s two-car haul. If both Ferraris reproduce their Austin form at altitude, Ferrari can consolidate second in the constructors’ standings and finish the season with real momentum heading into 2027.

The championship will be decided soon enough, and Antonelli has earned it. The runner-up fight is now the most competitive story of the season, and Ferrari look best placed to win it. Hamilton is one point from second place, and Mexico City could hand it to him by Sunday evening.