Eleven races down, the summer break has arrived, and it is time to see who’s who and what’s what.
The opening rounds suggested Mercedes might turn the new regulations into a season-long victory parade. George Russell won in Australia, before Kimi Antonelli rattled off five consecutive victories between China and Monaco. Six races, six Mercedes wins. Pretty ominous stuff for everyone else.
The picture has changed since. Of the following five Grands Prix, Mercedes won two, Ferrari claimed two and McLaren finally joined the party in Hungary. The gaps have tightened and the W17 has lost some of its early invincibility, although Mercedes still head the constructors’ standings by 72 points.
So, who heads into the summer break sitting pretty, and who desperately needs August to provide more than a nice holiday?
The ones everyone keeps their eyes on
Kimi Antonelli
Kimi Antonelli looks practically unstoppable. Six victories from eleven races, six pole positions, nine podiums and a 50-point championship lead.
Mercedes won every Grand Prix up to and including Monaco, with Antonelli responsible for five of those victories. He (or rather his car) stumbled in Barcelona, where a mechanical issue delivered his first DNF of the year, but he clawed his way back to the top step at Spa and still secured third in Hungary despite Mercedes lacking the pace to challenge McLaren.
So how about that WDC? He is certainly the firm fan favourite, helped by the fact that he seems to combine frightening speed with the demeanour of one of your mate’s fun little brothers. The record books are certainly ready for him. Sebastian Vettel became the youngest World Drivers’ Champion at 23 years and 133 days old; Antonelli would comfortably smash that record if he carries this lead through to Abu Dhabi (whether it’s hosted there or not, depending on how much the world is burning, otherwise we might be heading to one of the back-up tracks F1 is already lining up).
Leading before the summer break is one thing, but holding off Ferrari, McLaren, and a teammate closing in is a different beast entirely, especially with the Mercedes looking less dominant than it did at the start. Antonelli has answered every question so far, but how he copes when that pressure truly hits in the second half will determine it all.
George Russell
Nobody, but certainly not George himself, expected George Russell to find himself playing catch-up to Antonelli quite this quickly.
Two victories and third in the championship usually represent a perfectly respectable first half. The problem sits on the other side of the Mercedes garage, where a teenager has won six races and built quite a significant points gap. Suddenly, Russell’s own strong results look rather less shiny.
His season began perfectly with victory in Australia, and he struck back in Austria. Yet the momentum has belonged firmly to Antonelli. Russell has struggled to string clean weekends together, and recent rounds have brought a mixture of driving errors and car troubles.
Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc
Lewis Hamilton finally appears more at home in red. A full season with Ferrari, a winter to influence the car and a stronger understanding of how the team operates have helped him settle into life at Maranello. His Barcelona victory felt like the breakthrough everyone spent 2025 waiting for, and second in the championship hardly counts as a disaster.
Still, one victory from eleven leaves him 50 points behind Antonelli, and especially Hungary offered another reminder of how quickly useful points can disappear.
Hamilton originally qualified second, only 0.012 seconds away from Norris’ pole, before receiving a three-place grid penalty for impeding Oscar Piastri. He then added a five-second penalty for speeding in the pit lane during the race, costing himself a possible podium and dropping behind Leclerc in the final classification.
Both of which, I myself judged to be fair, but Hamilton has received a fair collection of penalties this season, and not all were so clean-cut. His frustrations around stewarding certainly carry some merit. The FIA’s inconsistent punishments have made a rod for their own back. Fans are primed to question every decision because similar-looking offences regularly produce wildly different consequences.
Take, for example, Carlos Sainz’s collision with Piastri in Hungary rather proved the point. Sainz had been informed that blue flags were being shown, yet made contact as Piastri attempted to lap him. The stewards found Sainz wholly responsible, but still reduced the standard punishment for causing a collision from ten to five seconds. For many, five seconds felt remarkably soft. The collision removed Piastri from a fight at the front, yet Sainz received the same penalty Hamilton collected for speeding in the pit lane and Bearman received for ignoring blue flags. Those incidents carried completely different consequences and levels of danger. Stuffing them into the same five-second box makes the whole penalty system feel increasingly arbitrary.
Anyway, moving on from penalties. Charles Leclerc deserves his own mention for his going-ons in the first half of the season. He sits fourth, 31 points behind Hamilton, and produced Ferrari’s second victory of the season at Silverstone. His close second place behind Antonelli at Spa was quite promising as well.
The problem is painfully familiar for many a Ferrari fan. The team looks capable of winning one weekend and spend the next tripping over their own shoelaces. Classic Ferrari, really.
Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri
Lando Norris will head into the break chuffed with his victory in Hungary.
He closed the first half on a high, claimed McLaren’s first Grand Prix win of 2026 and reminded everyone that he is the reigning world champion.
Still, it did little in terms of truly moving the needle for his 2026 WDC aspirations. Norris enters the summer break fifth in the standings, 91 points behind Antonelli. That is a hefty deficit for a reigning World Champion who began the year expecting to defend his crown.
Oscar Piastri has endured an even stranger campaign. He began 2026 with the lingering frustration of losing the previous year’s title to Norris, then watched his new season become a series of missed opportunities. Reliability trouble, incidents and several compromised weekends have left him seventh in the standings, 127 points behind Antonelli.
Hungary summed up his year. Piastri fought Norris for the lead on the opening lap and looked capable of challenging for victory, only for his afternoon to end after the collision with Sainz. Another strong result disappeared through circumstances partly outside his control.
Max Verstappen
Things are slowly looking up at Red Bull, although the current view still contains far too much Mercedes rear wing.
The RB22 has struggled with pace, reliability and some deeply unsettling behaviour. Verstappen has wrung far more from the car than it regularly deserves, but he remains sixth in the standings without a victory. That a four-time world champion is stuck down there tells you everything you need to know about the state of that car.
His podiums at Spa and Hungary suggest Red Bull have finally started making progress. He finished third in Belgium and followed that with second at the Hungaroring, despite describing the latter as a race of survival. Because of this, his future is the topic of much speculation. Last year, Max was linked with Mercedes thanks to Toto drooling over the Dutchman. But after months of rumours, public flirting and repeated questions eventually produced absolutely nothing. Verstappen confirmed before the 2025 Hungarian Grand Prix that he would remain at Red Bull for 2026, putting a swift end to that particular rumour.
This year, rumour has it that McLaren have entered the conversation. Reports linking Verstappen with the reigning champions have gathered pace, although Zak Brown has publicly backed Norris and Piastri and played down the chances of either leaving.
Verstappen’s contract runs until the end of 2028 anyway, so on paper, it all seems set in stone. Or so you’d think, as reported performance clauses appear to be keeping the exit door slightly ajar. Red Bull maintain that he wants to stay, whilst Max has avoided making the sort of definitive declaration that would put the rumours to bed. That could mean he is exploring his options. Equally, it serves as useful leverage while Red Bull attempt to give him a car capable of winning again. Verstappen knows exactly how much power he holds, and he has little reason to surrender it in July. Additionally, early retirement remains a distinct possibility; whilst Max lives and breathes racing, he hasn’t looked half as alive in F1 this year as he has when taking on endurance events.
The ones struggling at the back
Cadillac
Cadillac still have zero points, although that isn’t necessarily such a big deal. They are a brand-new Formula 1 team after all, navigating completely new regulations, building race operations from scratch, and trying to catch up to organisations with decades of experience. Nobody sensible expected them to arrive in Melbourne and immediately start troubling the top dogs.
Their reliability record, however, still makes for grim reading. Cadillac had managed to finish only three of the opening eight Grands Prix with both cars. Then, both drivers retired after a handful of laps at the Red Bull Ring (despite the team bringing a substantial upgrade package) and the Hungarian Grand Prix added another double DNF, which really isn’t good going. The frustrating part is that the pace has started moving in the right direction in terms of pace. The Austria upgrades appeared to bring them closer to the established midfield, and Pérez came painfully close to scoring the team’s first point in Monaco before a post-race penalty dropped him back down the order.
If they can sort out their reliability, they might have a proper shot at it in the second half of the season.
Aston Martin
Aston Martin have one point. One. Which must feel terribly sour after finishing the 2025 season with 89. Sure, we’re only halfway through, but even so, the tally should be higher than a single point.
To put things in perspective: Adrian Newey is leading the project, Honda arrived for the new regulation cycle, Fernando Alonso remains behind the wheel and the facilities at Silverstone have swallowed enough money to fund a small nation. Somehow, the result is a team faffing around at the back with Cadillac. The AMR26 arrived woefully undercooked. Newey described the opening races as a complete nightmare and admitted that the immediate goal was simply to reach a point of respectability.
If anything, that assessment feels generous. A team that occasionally fought for podiums in previous years has spent 2026 celebrating Q2 appearances like race wins.
Aston brought 16 listed changes to Hungary, covering almost every major aerodynamic area of the car. The package included a substantially reworked nose, front wing, floor, bodywork, and rear suspension, all aimed at making Newey’s high-rake concept function properly. The initial feedback was promising, but Hungary still ended with Stroll and Alonso down in 13th and 14th. The main issue seems to lie with the Honda power unit, which failed to deliver the expected performance, and even Newey can’t design a chassis good enough to work miracles around an engine deficit. They’ll be desperately hoping the second half of the season brings improvements across the board.
Midfield anonymity
Racing Bulls currently lead the midfield with 66 points, largely thanks to Liam Lawson quietly rebuilding his reputation and scoring 43 of them. They rarely produce anything spectacular, but they bring the cars home and collect the points other teams keep carelessly leaving behind. And just five points back sit Alpine, whose move to Mercedes power has dragged them from last place into something resembling competence. Their Miami upgrade helped unlock even more pace, which they’ve been reaping the rewards of ever since, but it’s up to them to keep this momentum going..
Haas started the season looking surprisingly capable, before the development race left them standing at the station. Bearman has scored 18 of their 21 points, so kudos for him. Audi have shown occasional flashes of promise, mostly through Gabriel Bortoleto, but twelve points remains a fairly miserable return. Williams sit a further point behind, having begun the year with an overweight car and spent eleven rounds trying to undo the damage.
All in all…
Antonelli enters the summer break as the clear favourite, but the last five races have at least shown that Mercedes can be beaten. Hamilton, Russell, Norris and Verstappen now need to turn those occasional signs of life into an actual championship fight.
There are eleven confirmed races left, twelve if the Bahrain Grand Prix completes its slightly unexpected relocation to Malaysia, as announced yesterday.
First up is Zandvoort from 21 to 23 August, for the Dutch Grand Prix’s self-proclaimed Final Lap. One last weekend beside the dunes, one final sea of orange (on home soil, at least, because the orange army is everywhere) and perhaps the perfect place for Verstappen to rediscover the top step.
After that, the championship has a long road towards Abu Dhabi. Or whichever back-up circuit is called into service next.
