Max Verstappen in the Red Bull at the 2025 Japanese Grand Prix. Illustrative image, not from Brazil. Photo: Liauzh / Wikimedia Commons (<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA 4.0</a>)
Everyone knows Kimi Antonelli has the 2026 drivers’ title. The more interesting number is the one nobody has settled: 16 points. That is the gap between Max Verstappen in second (261) and Charles Leclerc in fifth (245) in the official standings, and four rounds remain with 100 points still available because there are no Sprints left on the calendar.
| Position | Driver | Team | Points | Gap to second |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Max Verstappen | Red Bull | 261 | – |
| 3 | Lewis Hamilton | Ferrari | 259 | 2 |
| 4 | George Russell | Mercedes | 250 | 11 |
| 5 | Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | 245 | 16 |
What 16 points actually means
A race win is worth 25 points and a sixth place is worth 8. Put Leclerc first and Verstappen sixth in the same race and the swing is 17 points, which is more than the 16 that separate them now. In other words, the whole second-to-fifth spread can be erased by a single result in the right order. It will not be erased on a normal Sunday, but the spread is small enough that nobody in the group can treat any weekend as a throwaway.
The top of the cluster is even tighter. Verstappen leads Hamilton by two points, and swapping any two neighbouring places in the top six moves at least two points between them. A Hamilton win with Verstappen second would move seven in one go.
Why the Mexico City result sharpened it
Formula 1’s own race-week preview puts the Mexico City damage in clear terms: Ferrari scored 30 of a possible 43 points with its second and fourth places, while Mercedes took third and sixth. Leclerc picked up a time penalty after his fight with Hamilton at Turn 4, so the two Ferrari drivers are now chasing the same points, and the same Red Bull ahead of them, from different sides of the garage. That is the competitive problem hiding in this number. When two team-mates are both inside the cluster, they take points off each other before they take any off Verstappen. Our earlier look at Russell being 11 points from second covers the Mercedes side of that arithmetic, and the constructors’ picture for Brazil shows what Ferrari is spending its points on.
What to watch at Interlagos
The Sao Paulo Grand Prix runs Sunday, November 8, with the start at 14:00 local time (12:00 p.m. ET), over 71 laps or two hours, per Formula 1’s timetable, which is subject to change. Qualifying is Saturday at 15:00 local (1:00 p.m. ET). Two things decide whether the cluster tightens or breaks. First, grid position: the order after qualifying tells you which of the four starts the race already holding the points lead among them. Second, the forecast, because F1’s preview flags a chance of wet weather on Sunday, and a wet race is the fastest way to turn a 16-point gap into a 17-point swing. The standings will not be settled in Brazil, but a result like that would show who has the better chance of ending the year in second.
Related reading: Bottas’s Mexico crash and Cadillac’s quieter failures. Points and standings are from Formula 1’s official pages as of November 4, 2026.
Featured image credit: Max Verstappen in the Red Bull at the 2025 Japanese Grand Prix. Photo: Liauzh / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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