Photo: Steffen Prößdorf / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Stat of the Day: Mercedes now has 652 points, and that was enough to lock up the 2026 Formula 1 constructors’ title with three races still to run. It is the team’s ninth constructors’ championship and its first since 2021, according to RacingNews365’s post-Interlagos standings. Ferrari, second in the table, sits roughly 142 points back with 129 still available.
The title was not won on a flashy day. Mercedes scored 22 points in São Paulo with George Russell fourth and Kimi Antonelli fifth, and it was the first time this season that neither car reached the podium. It still needed only to outscore Ferrari by three points, and it did.
What the Mercedes constructors title margin reveals
Look at where the points come from. Antonelli has 390 and Russell has 262, which add up to the full 652. There is no third scorer to lean on, so the gap to Ferrari is really a gap between two driver pairs. Hamilton has 261 and Leclerc is in the high 240s, so Russell and Hamilton are close to level, as we covered in our look at the one-point gap for third. The 142-point cushion is largely Antonelli’s lead over Leclerc.
That matters because Antonelli had already won the drivers’ title in Mexico City a week earlier. Mercedes did not need a perfect weekend in Brazil because one driver had been collecting wins and podiums all year while the other kept the second car in the top five. The weekend that clinched the constructors’ title was the team’s quietest, and it was still comfortable.
The rest of the field
Red Bull is third on 415 and McLaren fourth on 398, so the order behind Mercedes is Ferrari, Red Bull, McLaren, a long way apart. Max Verstappen is second in the drivers’ table on 279 and extended his lead over Russell in Brazil, helped by his P21-to-P2 recovery, which also exposed a slicks problem at Red Bull. That is a lot of points for a car that is third in the constructors’ standings.
What happens next
With the team title settled, the remaining races are about second place in the drivers’ standings, the Russell and Hamilton fight, and Ferrari’s pursuit of the runner-up spot. Track action resumes soon, and we laid out what to watch in what the paddock is waiting on. For the latest on the schedule, see The Grid Today for Nov. 12.
How we verified it: The 652-point total, the 22-point Interlagos haul and the three-race margin were cross-checked across GPblog, RacingNews365 and Grande Prêmio. Sources differ slightly on Ferrari’s exact total (510 or 512), so we describe the gap as roughly 142 points.
Image credits: Featured image, Photo: Steffen Prößdorf / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. In-article image, Photo: Liauzh / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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