By Rudy Falco | October 19, 2026
SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE - OCTOBER 11: Race winner Max Verstappen of the Netherlands and Oracle Red Bull Racing and Gianpiero Lambiase, Head of Racing of Oracle Red Bull Racing celebrate on the podium with the trophies and Champagne during the F1 Grand Prix of Singapore at Marina Bay Street Circuit on October 11, 2026 in Singapore, Singapore. (Photo by Simon Galloway/LAT Images)
I had Max Verstappen winning in Singapore, and he did... that's about all I got right in my last column. I had Kimi Antonelli winning the sprint (Verstappen won that too), I had Sergio Pérez failing to finish (he came home 17th), and I had George Russell stuck near the back after his engine penalty, when he actually climbed from 19th on the grid to ninth. So I'll own the misses first. The real story didn't need my help anyway. Antonelli left Marina Bay with a 102-point lead and six races to go, and if he wins next Sunday at the Circuit of the Americas and two other results go his way, a 20-year-old Italian will be world champion in Austin... and the youngest one the sport has ever had.
First, the man who won, because he's also the man who can stop the party. Verstappen took pole by 0.054 seconds from Charles Leclerc, turned it into a 7.335-second win over 62 laps, and did most of it without being able to talk to his pit wall. His radio failed, so race engineer GianPiero Lambiase asked him questions he could answer by pressing the transmit button. "Maybe the team liked it that they couldn't hear me throughout the race," Verstappen joked to F1 TV afterwards, before handing the credit back: "GP did a great job. I mean 90% of the things that he said to me were also things that I wanted to ask him." Lambiase has been his engineer since 2016 and is off to McLaren as chief racing officer; Tom Hart, who's lined up as Verstappen's full-time engineer for 2027, steps in on the radio at the United States Grand Prix.
It was Verstappen's 73rd career win, it came in his 250th start, and it was his first in Singapore at the 10th attempt. He's now won at 27 different circuits, second only to Lewis Hamilton's 31. In the press conference he called it "one of the first times that I've driven in clean air here in Singapore," and once he had it, we didn't see him again. It's two wins in a row now, at Sepang in Malaysia and then Singapore, and he still says the standings don't interest him: "For me personally, I don't care if I'm second, third or fourth." He's fourth, by the way... 119 points back.
SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE - OCTOBER 11: Race winner Max Verstappen of the Netherlands driving the (3) Oracle Red Bull Racing RB22 Red Bull Ford Powertrains takes the chequered flag during the F1 Grand Prix of Singapore at Marina Bay Street Circuit on October 11, 2026 in Singapore, Singapore. (Photo by Mark Sutton - Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images)
Saturday's sprint was where the weekend went sideways. Rain pushed the start back 30 minutes and the field went off on intermediates. Verstappen made another bad getaway from pole ("The start was horrendous again," he said), which let Russell lead into Turn 1, and then Russell crashed at the end of the opening lap. "The number one rule in the rain is don't touch the white line," he said, and, well... he'd touched it. A five-lap Safety Car followed. Verstappen took the lead back and won by 2.591 seconds from Hamilton, with Leclerc third and Antonelli fourth. The sprint's worst moment came on the final lap, when Lando Norris dived down the inside of Oscar Piastri, got it badly wrong and put his teammate in the barrier. Andrea Stella called it "unacceptable." Norris, the reigning champion, didn't argue: "I can't attempt what I did, I should never have attempted it in the first place, even if the move was on." Verstappen and Leclerc both took a shot at the format, too. "I think we shouldn't host a Sprint where you can't pass," Verstappen said, and Leclerc went further: "I don't think it makes sense to have any Sprint races on city tracks in general." Can you blame them?
SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE - OCTOBER 10: Max Verstappen of the Netherlands driving the (3) Oracle Red Bull Racing RB22 Red Bull Ford Powertrains passes George Russell of Great Britain driving the (63) Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team W17 as he crashes out of the race during the Sprint ahead of the F1 Grand Prix of Singapore at Marina Bay Street Circuit on October 10, 2026 in Singapore, Singapore. (Photo by James Sutton/LAT Images)
Hamilton's race came apart under the second virtual safety car (the first came early, for Gabriel Bortoleto's stricken Audi). A VSC slows everyone to a set pace, which makes a pit stop cheap. That's why staying out hurt so much. Hamilton started third, made his only stop on lap 18 (mediums off, softs on) and was running well until Lance Stroll's clutch failure brought out the VSC on lap 39. Leclerc and Antonelli dived in for fresh tyres; Hamilton said he'd missed the pit entry, stayed out on old softs, and paid for it. Leclerc went by him on lap 46. Then on lap 54 Norris tried to pass him into Turn 1, both ran wide, and Antonelli slipped past the pair of them into third. Hamilton faded to sixth and got straight on the radio: "Sorry boys, I let you down today with that strategy. My call and I lost us valuable points." Fred Vasseur was blunt with reporters ("Don't blame the team") and then moved on as fast as he could: "But now let's be focused on Austin." Leclerc, second on the day, called himself "happy but not super happy," and said, "I gave it all and I don't regret anything."
SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE - OCTOBER 11: Lewis Hamilton of Great Britain driving the (44) Scuderia Ferrari SF-26 battles with Andrea Kimi Antonelli of Italy driving the (12) Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team W17 at the race start during the F1 Grand Prix of Singapore at Marina Bay Street Circuit on October 11, 2026 in Singapore, Singapore. (Photo by Anni Graf - Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images)
Antonelli had to manage brake trouble, fluid around his feet and a pile of track-limits warnings just to bring home third. After his stop his brake pedal went long, which Toto Wolff put down to heat soak (the brakes cooking while the car sat still), and Wolff thinks the fluid was probably the drinks bottle. He also got all the way to his final track-limits warning without, somehow, taking a penalty. Wolff joked about all those warnings, saying he'd put "a pillow from the hotel" under his driver "so he can actually see the road," and then got serious: "Half the race we already have three strikes, but it also shows that he's pushing the limits a lot." On the podium, Jenson Button told Antonelli he could clinch the title in Austin, and he looked like a kid who hadn't done his homework. "Can I really? Well, let's not worry about that," he said. "Let's try to do the best weekend as possible and finish the job." Peter Windsor, in his YouTube review, put it plainly: "it is unbelievable the job he has done."
SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE - OCTOBER 11: Third placed Andrea Kimi Antonelli of Italy and Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team celebrates on the podium during the F1 Grand Prix of Singapore at Marina Bay Street Circuit on October 11, 2026 in Singapore, Singapore. (Photo by Clive Rose/Getty Images)
Antonelli hasn't won since the Spanish Grand Prix in Madrid on September 13. Since then he's been fifth in Baku, second at Sepang and third in Singapore, and Mercedes, which won 11 of the first 15 races between its two drivers, hasn't won since Russell's victory in Baku. Asked whether it would worry him if Verstappen were properly in the fight, Antonelli didn't dodge it: "Yeah, because it would be very scary." Russell, whose one-stop recovery took a hit when, as he put it, "the VSC ended as I came to the pits," went further: "The goal right now is to try and improve the car, because we were very much the dominant team for this whole season and, you look at the recent races, Red Bull have been very much the best." He's also got one more power unit penalty to take, and he's already picking the spot: "Maybe looking at Vegas."
Further back, Liam Lawson took seventh for Racing Bulls, and Nico Hülkenberg spent the last 15 laps keeping Russell behind his Audi for eighth ("defend from George obviously which wasn't so easy," he said). Isack Hadjar, Verstappen's Red Bull teammate, started from the pit lane ("At some point I was nearly dead last," he said) and still took the last point in tenth, a day after a power unit failure wrecked his sprint. Red Bull boss Laurent Mekies praised the crew's work on the car and admitted Hadjar never got a proper chance to show his speed: "So we owe him one." Norris and Piastri finished fourth and fifth, and Norris didn't sugarcoat McLaren's slide: "We're still fighting for top four and almost for podiums but we're still too far off and we're the worst of the top four teams." Stella calls the way the advantage swings between teams this year "the ping pong," and right now it's swinging Red Bull's way.
So here's what has to happen for the title to be decided in Texas. Antonelli has 340 points and eight wins; Russell has 238 points and three wins, Hamilton 229, Verstappen 221 and Leclerc 215. There aren't any sprints left and there's no fastest-lap point any more. A win pays 25, 150 points are still out there, and 125 will be left once Austin is done. He has to win: if Antonelli finishes second or worse, it's not happening in Texas. If he wins he goes to 365, and he's champion as long as Russell finishes ninth or worse and Hamilton finishes fifth or worse. (Russell in ninth would be exactly 125 behind, but he'd have eight wins at most even if he won every race left, so Antonelli's ninth would settle a tie on points.) Verstappen and Leclerc don't even need a condition; finishing second behind him would still leave them 126 and 132 back. Sound like a lot to line up? Not really. Run Singapore's result through those rules and Russell (ninth) and Hamilton (sixth) both would have done their part; Antonelli just didn't win. Wolff has been playing it down, putting Antonelli's chances at "probably almost 100 per cent" before adding the obvious: "But it's motor racing, you can break down, you can have accidents." His guess for when is "Mexico or Brazil." The only other wrinkle is the schedule. Stefano Domenicali says "the calendar is confirmed," but F1's own mid-October deadline for a final call on Qatar and Abu Dhabi passed without an announcement, and Imola is on standby in case the conflict in the Middle East forces a change. If anything, losing a race would only make it easier for Antonelli.
Think about what it would mean if he does it. On October 25, Antonelli will be 20 years and 61 days old. The youngest champion in history is Sebastian Vettel, who was 23 years and 134 days old when he won the 2010 title in Abu Dhabi, so we're talking about beating that by more than three years. He'd be Italy's first world champion since Alberto Ascari in 1953, and Italy's only other one is Nino Farina, the very first, in 1950. Doing it with five rounds to spare would also put him among the earliest clinches ever; Michael Schumacher's 2002 title, sealed in France with six races to go, is still the benchmark. COTA's even seen this before: Hamilton sealed the 2015 title there on October 25, the same date as this year's race, and wrapped up another one there in 2019. Did anyone see this coming in March... from a driver who started the season as a teenager? I sure didn't.
COTA also suits the driver most likely to spoil it. It's 3.4 miles and 20 corners, 56 laps on Sunday, and F1 first raced there in 2012. The run up the hill to Turn 1 is the famous bit. Drivers mostly complain about the bumps. Verstappen, who'd watched the WEC cars bounce around there, said he'd "probably need to order a new spine" after the weekend: "Yeah, I'll become like RoboCop." He's not exactly scared of the place, though. He's won four of the last five Grands Prix in Austin (2021, 2022, 2023 and 2025, with Leclerc taking 2024), and last year he did it from pole. Hamilton has won there five times. Antonelli finished 13th there as a rookie in 2025, though he did set the fastest lap, so he's coming back 12 months later with a title on the line. Leclerc still holds the lap record from 2019, a 1:36.169. This year there's no sprint, which Antonelli seemed glad about: "Now we go to Austin, a normal weekend, where we can hopefully do a lot of changes and understand the package more." That's a driver telling you his car still isn't quite right, and COTA's bumps and heavy braking into Turn 1 and Turn 12 are a hard place to sort out brakes that went soft in Singapore.
AUSTIN, TEXAS - OCTOBER 19: Max Verstappen of the Netherlands driving the (1) Oracle Red Bull Racing RB21 leads the field into turn one at the start during the F1 Grand Prix of United States at Circuit of The Americas on October 19, 2025 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Clive Rose/Getty Images)
COTA chairman Bobby Epstein says ticket sales are tracking towards a record crowd, and last year's race was already a sell-out of more than 400,000. Cadillac, the new American entry, comes to Texas for the second home race of its first season (Miami was the first) still without a point. Pérez calls Austin and Mexico "our two home races" (Austin for the team, Mexico City for him), and he'll make his 300th Grand Prix start there a week later. Asked by the Financial Times whether Cadillac's facilities beat Mercedes', Valtteri Bottas said simply, "I would say so." The team's now run by Marcin Budkowski, and it's got a new Tommy Hilfiger collection out for the race. Would a first point in front of that crowd be too much to ask? Probably... I'd still love to see it.
So here's how I see Sunday, October 25 (lights out at 3 PM Central, 4 PM Eastern). Verstappen takes pole on Saturday with Antonelli and Leclerc right behind him, and he holds the inside up the hill into Turn 1 while Antonelli fends off Leclerc and Russell through the Esses. Pole and clean air won him Singapore, and the same recipe puts him three seconds clear inside the first ten laps. They'll pit around lap 20, where Mercedes tries the undercut and gets close, but not close enough. A car parked out on track brings out a virtual safety car just past half-distance, which bunches the leaders up without changing the order, and Leclerc spends the last 15 laps trying to get his Ferrari past Antonelli without ever quite getting a run on him down the back straight. Russell finishes fourth, though it won't change anything for the title, because Antonelli in second means it goes to Mexico no matter what. Gabriel Bortoleto, whose Audi lasted seven laps in Singapore, doesn't see the flag again. The title waits a week, until Mexico City on November 1... and on those numbers, Antonelli would get there with 358 points to Russell's 250, and a win in Mexico would seal it whatever anyone else does. I still don't see anyone catching him.
Verstappen, Antonelli and Leclerc, in that order.
0 comments