Italian Grand Prix: Antonelli's 59 Points Meet Norris at Monza

• Round13 of 23
• Race daySun 6 Sep
• CircuitMonza
• Still to run11 rounds

Two wins in a row for Lando Norris, at the Hungaroring and Zandvoort, and he is still fourth in the championship. That is the shape of the 2026 season heading to Monza: the man in form is 83 points off the lead, and the man leading it, Kimi Antonelli, has finished second and third in those same two races without losing much of anything. Antonelli's 59-point cushion has held through the summer because nobody behind him has strung a clean run together.

Championship standings

Fifty-nine points cover first and second, and second place itself is a dead heat: Russell and Hamilton are locked on 183 apiece. Toggle between drivers and constructors for the full picture heading into Italy:

Norris sits 83 points off the lead in fourth, with Leclerc four behind him in fifth. With 11 rounds left, that is recoverable on paper, but only if the leader stops scoring. The bigger casualty is Max Verstappen, sixth on 112 and 130 adrift, and Oscar Piastri, seventh on 104 despite driving the car that has won the last two grands prix.

Switch to the constructors and Mercedes lead 425 to Ferrari's 338, with McLaren third on 263. Mercedes have built that on consistency rather than wins: their 87-point margin comes from landing both cars in the points week after week while Ferrari split Hamilton and Leclerc across the top five and McLaren carry one car that scores and one that doesn't.

Recent form

Antonelli and Norris have each scored 86 points over the last five rounds. Identical. Here is where the leading contenders have finished in each of the last five races, best recent form first:

Read the rows left to right. Norris's is the cleaner one now: seventh, fourth, seventh, then two wins. Antonelli's has a P15 at Silverstone in it, and he still matched the total thanks to a win at Spa and podiums in Austria, Hungary and the Netherlands. Leclerc is third in the window on 80 with a Silverstone win, and Russell's 77 comes with a retirement at Spa in the middle of it. Verstappen's row is the wreckage: two podiums, two finishes outside the top 20.

How the title race has unfolded

The cumulative view shows a lead built and then defended rather than extended. Switch to the momentum view to see the scoring rate instead of the total:

Antonelli is on 21 points a race over the last three rounds, Norris 20.7. Those two are pulling away from the drivers actually closest to Antonelli in the table: Hamilton is on 12 and Russell on 9.7. The championship leader is not slowing down, which is why a 59-point gap to his own teammate has not moved much since the break.

If current form holds

Take each driver's scoring rate over the last five races and run it across the 11 rounds still to come. Nobody keeps a hot streak going untouched to Abu Dhabi, so read it as a what-if rather than a forecast:

On that maths Antonelli finishes on 431 and keeps the title by 79. Russell projects to 352, Norris to 348, Hamilton 333, Leclerc 331: four drivers inside 21 points of each other and all of them fighting for second, not first. Norris's charge is worth 189 points over the run-in, the joint-best on the grid, and it still isn't enough. He needed it to start six races ago.

What's at stake this weekend

A single Sunday can't touch the top of the table. Monza can't take the championship lead off Antonelli:

So the weekend is about the run-in. To overturn 59 points across 11 rounds, Russell needs to average better than five points a race on his teammate, and right now he is averaging eleven fewer. Norris has the harder sum: 83 points over 11 races is seven and a half a round, roughly a win-to-fourth swing every weekend from here to Abu Dhabi.

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

• Russell: average +5.4 pts a race on Antonelli to take the lead by Abu Dhabi.
• Norris: +7.6 a race on Antonelli, from 83 back with 11 to run.
• Hamilton: any points at all on Russell settles second, they're level.
• Ferrari: about +8 a race on Mercedes to erase the 87-point constructors' gap.

The battles across the grid

The title fight is settled for the weekend. Most of the others aren't. Here they are, sorted by the gap:

Two fights are dead level: Russell and Hamilton for second in the championship, and Hülkenberg and Sainz for P15. Three points split RB and Alpine over fifth in the constructors', five separate Lawson and Gasly for ninth. Hamilton's 24-point cushion over Norris for best of the rest is the widest of the close fights, and given Norris's last two Sundays it's the one most likely to close first.

The circuit: Monza

• Lap length5.793 km
• Corners11
• Race laps53

Eleven corners across 5.793 km, the fewest of anywhere the championship goes. Monza is long straights bolted together by three chicanes and the Lesmos, and it asks a question no other circuit does: how little downforce dare you run? Teams strip the wings back to almost nothing for top speed, then have to find enough front end to survive the braking zones and enough rear stability for the Parabolica. Get that trade wrong in either direction and it costs you all weekend.

Monza rewards straight-line speed and brave braking. Two ways to read what that favours: how the other low-drag tracks have gone in 2026, and who has won here.

The recent Monza history in the widget is old enough to be trivia rather than form. Alonso won here in 2010 for Ferrari and in 2007 for McLaren, Barrichello took the 2009 race for Brawn, Vettel won for Toro Rosso in 2008, Schumacher for Ferrari in 2006 and Montoya for McLaren in 2005. None of those drivers are in this championship. What matters more is the 2026 pattern on the fast circuits, and there the two names are Antonelli, a winner at Spa, and Norris, winner of the last two.

Grid position matters less here. Slipstreams down the two long straights and the Manual Override boost make Monza one of the easiest tracks on the calendar to pass, so a poor Saturday is recoverable.

Watch the first chicane. Turn 1 arrives after the longest full-throttle run of the lap and has ended more Italian Grands Prix than any corner in Formula 1. Cars three abreast into a braking zone that fits one is how Monza usually starts.

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