United States Grand Prix: Verstappen Arrives Hot, Antonelli 102 Clear

• Round18 of 23
• Race daySun 25 Oct
• CircuitAustin
• Still to run6 rounds

Two wins in a row for Max Verstappen, at Round 16 and in Singapore, and 109 points from the last five rounds, the most on the grid. Kimi Antonelli still leads the championship by 102, and with 6 rounds left the sharper question in Austin is who finishes second behind him.

Championship standings

102 points split the two Mercedes drivers. Behind George Russell the order bunches up fast: Lewis Hamilton on 229, Verstappen on 221, Charles Leclerc on 215 and Lando Norris on 201. Toggle between drivers and constructors for the full table heading into Texas:

Russell is only 9 points clear of Hamilton, and Hamilton is 8 clear of Verstappen. Three drivers in two teams are fighting over one spot, and none of them is close to the leader. Hamilton sits 111 off Antonelli. Below Norris the gap opens up, with Oscar Piastri seventh on 138.

Switch to the constructors and Mercedes lead Ferrari 578 to 444. The tighter fight is for third: McLaren on 339, Red Bull on 332, close enough for one weekend to swap them.

Recent form

Verstappen has the best recent run of anyone. Here is where the leading contenders finished in each of the last five rounds, best recent form first:

Verstappen's row reads 3, 2, 2, 1, 1. He hasn't finished lower than third in the window, and he hasn't gone backwards from one round to the next. Antonelli has been on the podium in four of the five, with a fifth in Azerbaijan the only miss, and his 98 points are second only to Verstappen's. Leclerc's 22nd at Monza hides a steady run since: 4, 4, 4, then second in Singapore. Russell has had the roughest stretch of the front-runners. He won in Azerbaijan, then finished 20th and 9th.

How the title race has unfolded

The cumulative view shows how Antonelli built his lead. The momentum view shows who is scoring now:

Over the last three rounds Verstappen is scoring 25.3 points a race. Antonelli is on 16, Hamilton on 12.7 and Russell on 9. That puts the man defending second at the bottom of the four, while the two drivers chasing him are both scoring faster. Antonelli's rate has slipped too, but from 102 points up he can afford it.

If current form holds

Take each driver's scoring rate over the last five rounds and run it out across the 6 that remain. Nobody holds a streak untouched to Abu Dhabi, so read it as a what-if, not a forecast:

On these numbers Antonelli finishes on 458 and the title stays at Mercedes. Verstappen outscores him over the window, 109 to 98, but that isn't nearly enough to close a 102-point gap. The order behind him changes, though. Verstappen goes from fourth today to second on 352, Russell drops to third on 304, and Leclerc (287) edges past Hamilton (284). If Red Bull's run continues, Russell loses second place.

What's at stake this weekend

Whatever Verstappen does on Sunday, Austin can't take the lead off Antonelli. Here is what the weekend can and can't change:

For the title, Austin is about the countdown, not the lead. Each weekend Antonelli leaves with his margin intact is one fewer chance for Russell to close it. The fight for second is where one Sunday changes things: 9 points is less than the difference between a win and a podium.

Across the remaining rounds, each challenger has a target:

• Russell: 102 points to find on his teammate across 6 rounds.
• Hamilton: 9 points on Russell flips second place.
• Verstappen: 8 points on Hamilton moves him into the top three.
• Red Bull: trail McLaren 339 to 332 for third in the constructors.

The battles across the grid

The lead is the loosest fight on the board. Most of the others are much closer. Here they are, sorted by gap:

Alonso and Ocon are level for 16th, and 3 points split Gasly and Lindblad for 10th. In the constructors, Haas are 7 clear of Audi for seventh. Near the front, the 8 points between Hamilton and Verstappen and the 9 between Russell and Hamilton both matter for the podium places, and Verstappen's form says he is the one most likely to move.

The circuit: Austin

• Lap length5.513 km
• Corners20
• Race laps56

Austin packs a lot into one lap. There's a steep climb into the first corner, a fast sequence of linked direction changes through the opening sector, then a long back straight that rewards straight-line speed. The car has to stay stable through the quick stuff and still be fast enough down the straight to attack or defend.

Two ways to read what that favours this weekend: who has been quick recently, and who tends to win here.

Verstappen won here four times out of five between 2021 and 2025, and the one he missed went to Leclerc in 2024. The only Mercedes win in that list is Bottas in 2019, and neither Antonelli nor Russell has won here. With Verstappen arriving off two straight wins, the history and the current form point the same way.

The back straight is the main overtaking spot. A chasing car can use the slipstream and the Manual Override boost to get alongside, so a poor qualifying doesn't have to cost the race.

Watch the first corner on lap one. The uphill run lets cars take different lines into the turn, and the start can shuffle the front rows before the field strings out.

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