Antonelli's lead reaches Spa at 25 points and falling fast

• Round10 of 22
• Race daySun 19 Jul
• CircuitSpa-Francorchamps
• Still to run13 rounds

Kimi Antonelli leads by 25 points, and the last three Sundays have all gone to other people. Charles Leclerc won the British Grand Prix, George Russell has a win and two seconds across the same three rounds, and Antonelli has finished off the podium in two of them. The cushion came from a fast spring, and it is coming down as Formula 1 arrives at Spa.

Championship standings

25 points separate the top two, both of them Mercedes. Lewis Hamilton sits third, another 7 back of Russell and closing. Switch between drivers and constructors before Belgium:

Hamilton is 32 points off the lead. With 13 rounds and more than 300 points left, that is a deficit, not a wall. Behind the front three the order stretches out: Leclerc is fourth on 108, and the McLarens of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri sit fifth and sixth as the new rules bite.

In the constructors' table Mercedes lead 333 to Ferrari's 255, both cars scoring at the front. Ferrari, winners of two of the last three grands prix, are the only team keeping that number honest. McLaren, third on 179, are racing for the last podium step rather than the title.

Recent form

The form heading into Spa belongs to Ferrari and Russell, not the man on top of the table. Here is where the contenders have finished across the last five rounds, strongest recent form first:

Read left to right. Hamilton has scored in all five, won at Barcelona, and banked 96 points over the window, more than anyone else while sitting third overall. Leclerc's Silverstone win gives Ferrari two of the last three. The leader's row is the roughest of the group: two wins to open, then Barcelona and Silverstone outside the points, with sprint scoring propping his window total up to 79.

How the title race has unfolded

The same swing runs through the whole season. Antonelli's early climb stands out on the cumulative line, and so does the way it levels through the mid-season rounds while Russell and both Ferraris keep gaining. Flip to the momentum view for scoring rate rather than the running total:

The momentum view carries it. Antonelli is down to 7.7 points a race, while Russell (22) and Hamilton (19) are scoring at better than double that. A big enough early lead buys a quiet run, and Antonelli spent one, but the slopes show how quickly the buffer is going. Spa starts to decide whether spring or summer wins the argument.

If current form holds

Here is the number the Mercedes pit wall will not like. Take each driver's rate over the last five races and run it across the 13 rounds still to come. Nobody keeps a streak clean all the way to Abu Dhabi, so read it as a what-if, not a forecast:

On that maths the leader loses the crown. Hamilton's last-five pace is worth 96 points, 17 clear of the next best, and carried to the finish it lifts him from third today to 397 and the title, one ahead of Antonelli's 384. The spring cushion still counts, but only while the recent order does not hold.

What's at stake this weekend

The maths up front are settled for the weekend. However well Russell and Ferrari are going, one race cannot move who leads. Spa cannot take the championship lead off Antonelli:

The weekend feeds the long game. With more than 300 points left across the final 13 rounds, Russell needs to outscore his teammate by an average of two points a race to clear the 25-point gap. That sits inside his current rate, and it is also the sort of margin a single retirement erases in either direction.

Across the rest of the season, each challenger has a target:

• Russell: average +2 pts a race on Antonelli to lead by Abu Dhabi.
• Hamilton: barely half a point a race on Russell flips second.
• Ferrari: about +6 a race on Mercedes to erase the 78-point constructors' gap.

The battles across the grid

The lead is fixed for the weekend, but it is one fight among a dozen, and most are tighter. Here they are, sorted by the gap:

Oliver Bearman and Franco Colapinto are level on 18 points in the midfield, and one point splits Alpine and RB in the constructors' table. The closest fight that reaches the podium is for second, where 7 points cover Russell and Hamilton and one clean Sunday would settle it.

The circuit: Spa-Francorchamps

• Lap length7.0 km
• Corners19
• DRS zones2
• Race laps44

At just over seven kilometres, Spa is the longest lap of the year and one of the hardest to set up. The flat-out climb through Eau Rouge and Raidillon onto the Kemmel Straight rewards power and nerve, while the twisting middle sector wants the downforce the same car has to shed again on the straights. Then there is the Ardennes weather, whose microclimate can leave one end of the lap wet and the other dry and turn strategy into a coin toss.

Spa favours a car quick in a straight line and steady through fast corners. Two ways to read who that helps: how 2026's other power tracks have gone, and who tends to win here.

The fast-track pattern tracks the title race. Antonelli swept the early ones at Shanghai, Suzuka and Miami, but the two most recent, the Red Bull Ring and Silverstone, went to Russell and Leclerc, the pair carrying the momentum into Belgium. The Spa history is less tidy: Verstappen took 2021, 2022 and 2023 back to back, while Hamilton won here in 2020 and 2024, so there is pedigree in the Ferrari garage too.

Grid position matters less here. Two DRS zones and the long run down the Kemmel Straight make Spa one of the easier tracks to pass on, so a messy qualifying need not sink a race.

Watch the first lap into La Source. The tight hairpin at the end of the opening straight has started plenty of Spa dramas, and a slow launch off the front row can be undone inside a few hundred metres.

For the full podium history, pole-to-win conversion and every past result here, see our Belgian Grand Prix results page.