Kimi Antonelli heads into the Azerbaijan Grand Prix with a commanding lead in the 2026 Formula 1 championship, but the Mercedes driver is refusing to treat the title race as settled.
The 20-year-old Italian arrives in Baku with an 81-point advantage over teammate George Russell after 14 rounds of the season. He has also won the two most recent races, strengthening his position at the top of the standings.
Antonelli’s lead is considerably larger than the advantage Oscar Piastri carried into Baku one year ago. In 2025, Piastri was leading the championship when his Azerbaijan weekend unraveled almost immediately after the start. He dropped to the back after nearly stalling on the grid and then crashed on the opening lap.
That incident began a difficult stretch for Piastri, who went six races without a podium as the championship battle eventually shifted toward Lando Norris and Max Verstappen.
Antonelli is determined not to repeat that kind of mistake.
He has emphasized that the championship remains undecided and that his focus is on taking the season one race at a time rather than calculating when the title could be secured. Formula 1’s official calculations show that his earliest possible championship-clinching scenario depends on results across the remaining rounds.
The Azerbaijan weekend has already provided a reminder that a large points advantage does not guarantee an easy race.
Mercedes teammate Russell topped both Thursday practice sessions in Baku, with Antonelli second in FP2, 0.552 seconds behind Russell. Max Verstappen was third in the session, followed by Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton.
Antonelli’s FP1 session was also interrupted by car problems, leaving him fifth and nearly nine-tenths of a second behind Russell. Piastri finished sixth in the opening practice session.
The Baku City Circuit is known for its combination of tight corners and a long main straight, creating opportunities for overtaking and slipstreaming while leaving little room for mistakes on its narrow street sections. The 2026 race is scheduled for 51 laps on the 6.003-kilometre circuit.
The championship picture is also significantly different from a year ago. Piastri, who was at the centre of last season’s title fight, is currently seventh in the 2026 standings on 120 points, while Antonelli leads with 292. Russell is second on 211, followed by Lewis Hamilton on 191 and Lando Norris on 186.
With qualifying still to come and the Azerbaijan Grand Prix scheduled for Sept. 26, Antonelli has a substantial cushion but still faces a circuit where one incident can rapidly change the weekend.
Baku therefore presents another test of whether Antonelli can maintain his consistency while protecting an increasingly valuable championship lead — with the memory of what happened to Piastri at the same circuit still fresh in the F1 paddock.
