Lando Norris has won the last two Grands Prix, cutting the deficit to the Formula One championship leader from 101 points to now just 83. At this projected rate of recovery, Norris would claw back the gap to the Mercedes driver to just two points with one race to go—should the calendar be reduced to just 22 races this year.
Prior to last season, this kind of turnaround would have been viewed as highly unlikely, if not impossible. Yet at the same stage of the 2025 season, Max Verstappen was 14 points behind the championship leader and finished the year just two short.
Revisiting the Precedents of the 2025 Title Fight
Yet there was something significantly different about last year, given the Dutch driver in fact did not close the 104-point deficit to the championship leader at the time, Oscar Piastri. His gap to the eventual championship winner, Lando Norris, was just 70 points after Zandvoort, who at the time trailed his Australian teammate.
Post-Zandvoort 2025, Norris was 34 points behind his teammate, which he easily overhauled as Piastri imploded at low-grip circuits along with the Aussie suffering some mechanical issues. Lando eventually finished the year 13 points ahead of his papaya teammate, meaning he had outscored him by 47 points across the final nine rounds of the year.
So Verstappen did not actually claw back a 102-point deficit, and Norris needed just 47 points to banish his teammate. On that basis alone, the precedent of 2025 does not provide for a projection that Norris can overcome Antonelli.
Strategic Moves and Technical Realities at Monza
Yet as Toto Wolff has admitted, Kimi Antonelli will take a number of engine penalties next time out in Monza and start from the back of the grid. This is a strategic call from the team to ensure Antonelli doesn’t suffer any further such grid drops for the remainder of the season.
Further, Wolff suggested Monza offers the biggest opportunity on the F1 calendar to make overtakes and provide a chance for Antonelli to come through the field and mitigate his penalty. Yet, the F1 paddock has its collective fingers crossed for the upcoming Italian Grand Prix, given it is the circuit on the calendar with the lowest energy recovery opportunities for the hybrid unit.
Logically, this means the teams with the best internal combustion engines (ICE) should fare well in Monza, and Ferrari is bringing a significant upgrade to its ICE for their home race. Red Bull have again been declared by the FIA to have the most powerful ICE, and McLaren have proven in recent weeks their MCL40 is the best package, operating a Mercedes powertrain.
All this means there is no guarantee that Mercedes will be better than the fourth-best team at the Grand Prix held in the Royal Park. If so, the best Antonelli can hope for without further mechanical interruptions is a low points finish. Should Norris win again in Monza, the deficit to Antonelli may be around 60 points, give or take a few.
Chassis Challenges and Competitor Dynamics
Again presuming there are 22 rounds in this F1 season, that would give Lando eleven more race weekends—including a Sprint—to recover the gap to the young Italian driver. Of course, were Norris to win the rest of the Grands Prix this year, he would overtake the Mercedes driver and retain his world championship. Yet the narrative of the 2026 season is that the team at the front has been chopping and changing, and this would require Mercedes to have two or three winning weekends to make matters very difficult for Norris.
Even if Mercedes upgrade their power unit, that would advantage McLaren too, and presently they have the best chassis in the F1 field. However, McLaren do have a challenge they must overcome if Norris is to have a chance at winning the title, given their MCL40 is currently poor at circuits where low-speed corners dominate.
The next track profile of this nature comes in five race weekends’ time in Singapore, given the Bahrain GP has now been rescheduled to take place in Malaysia after the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. The challenge for McLaren is to improve their race car setup, which includes front and rear anti-roll bar balance adjustments, softening the front springs—which allows the nose of the car to pitch down, giving more front-end bite into the turn—along with improved optimisation of their low-speed dampers.
Inside the Silver Arrows Intra-Team Battle
Another issue for Norris is that despite improved performances in recent weeks, George Russell remains second favourite to his young teammate. Since Antonelli’s last win at the Belgian Grand Prix, the gap between the pair of Silver Arrows drivers has grown from 50 to 59 points.
Even when the Italian suffered from a poor qualifying in Hungary, he recovered to finish P3 ahead of George Russell. Last time out in Zandvoort, Antonelli minimised the damage to his world championship lead; with a preferred tyre strategy over his teammate, he came home second behind Lando Norris and a place ahead of Russell.
Norris’s Fight and the Road Ahead
Following his dominant win in the Netherlands, Norris said to his race engineer on the cooldown lap, “It’s on,” making his intent to chase down Antonelli clear. He told assembled media after the race he was inspired by Max Verstappen’s charge in the autumn of 2025.
“Just the fact that it’s possible. Just the fact to keep believing, keep working hard, keep motivating the team in all the right ways. That’s the biggest thing. He [Max] didn’t do anything better than we were doing, apart from the fact we made some mistakes as a team in certain places,” said Norris.
Despite recent results going in Antonelli’s favour, Lando Norris believes the battle for the world championship is still on between the Silver Arrows duo. He likened the McLaren two drivers fighting for the championship in 2025 to where Mercedes now find themselves.
“We just had two drivers fighting for our championship. They just had one,” Norris explained. “It’s kind of a similar situation to what Mercedes are in now versus where I am. So, there’s not a lot, I would say, to take from it, apart from just keep believing that it’s possible until it’s not. And that’s the attitude we’re going to fight with,” the Briton concluded.
Fighting talk indeed, and of course Lando should believe there remains hope of him retaining his title. Yet the considerations above suggest it will be a tall order for the British driver, and Antonelli remains firm favourite to claim his maiden Formula One drivers’ championship.
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The Judge, a nom de plume of an experienced F1 journalist and site founder with long-standing sources across the paddock. With over 30 years of experience in Formula 1 as an insider journalist, I have built trusted connections across the paddock, from race engineers and mechanics to senior team figures. At The Judge 13, I and a handful of trusted colleagues share exclusive Formula 1 news, expert analysis and behind-the-scenes stories you will not find in mainstream motorsport media.
A.J. Hunt is Senior Editor at TJ13, where Andrew oversees editorial standards and contributes to the site’s Formula 1 coverage. A career journalist with experience in both print and digital sports media, Andrew trained in investigative journalism and has written for a range of European sports outlets.
At TJ13, Andrew plays a central role in shaping the site’s output, working across breaking news, analysis, and long-form features. Andrew’s responsibilities include fact-checking, refining editorial structure, and ensuring consistency in reporting across a fast-moving news cycle.
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