After Madrid, Antonelli owns the championship — and Formula 1 owns the debate

A first Grand Prix at the Madring left Kimi Antonelli 81 points clear. The week that followed was about a Virtual Safety Car, a 2027 calendar with ten Sprints, and a four-time champion who admits he nearly walked away.

Formula 1 did not race this week. It argued. The paddock left Madrid with a new winner on a new circuit, a championship table that looks increasingly settled, and a list of grievances long enough to fill the twelve days before Baku. Andrea Kimi Antonelli took the inaugural Spanish Grand Prix at the Madring on 13 September. By Monday morning, the conversation had already moved from the result to the mechanism that produced it.

The 20-year-old Mercedes driver started second to Lando Norris and finished first, 4.351 seconds ahead of Max Verstappen, with Norris third. It was Antonelli’s eighth victory in fourteen Grands Prix. George Russell was fifth. Lewis Hamilton retired with a brake failure after seven laps, ending a season-long run of completing every racing lap. The numbers that followed the chequered flag were blunt: Antonelli 292 points, Russell 211, Hamilton 191, Norris 186. The lead is 81 points with nine rounds still listed on the 2026 calendar.

The Virtual Safety Car that rewrote a race

Norris had taken pole by eleven thousandths of a second — 1:31.824 to Antonelli’s 1:31.835 — and built a lead of more than six seconds. The race turned when Lance Stroll’s Aston Martin stopped at Turn 20 with a brake problem. The Virtual Safety Car was called as Norris had already passed the pit entry. Antonelli and Verstappen were still short of the lane. They stopped under the VSC. Norris had to complete another lap. The caution ended before he reached the pits. A stop under the VSC costs roughly ten to eleven seconds less than a green-flag stop. Norris also lost time with a slow change of the right-side tyres and emerged behind both men.

He called himself “insanely unlucky” and said the regulation “should not define a whole race.” He also turned on the circuit itself, asking for Turns 18 and 19 to be removed and replaced with a longer straight into a hairpin. “I don’t know how someone looks at this design and goes, ‘Mint,’” he said. Martin Brundle, writing for Sky Sports, described the outcome as feeling “rather like a robbery” and suggested a VSC should remain in place for at least one full lap so every car has the same chance to pit.

“It is a rule that should not define a whole race.”

— Lando Norris, after the 2026 Spanish Grand Prix

Mercedes later said a changing system of coded radio messages had helped Antonelli prepare for the VSC stop that transformed the afternoon. The team also spent the week looking forward rather than sideways. After four races without a pole, despite consecutive victories, Mercedes said it expects a Malaysia upgrade — the relocated Bahrain Grand Prix at Sepang, 2–4 October — to restore qualifying pace.

A new track, an old argument

The Madring is 5.414 kilometres, 22 corners, 57 laps, 308.399 kilometres of racing distance. George Russell set the race’s fastest lap in 1:35.587. What the venue did not produce, on first acquaintance, was a race that drivers wanted to defend. Several described a procession. David Coulthard said an unchanged return in 2027 would be “stupidity.” Guenther Steiner compared the backlash to Las Vegas in its first year and warned that the 2027 date already on the new calendar will not survive public impatience if the layout stays as it is. Organisers have indicated they are open to changes that create overtaking.

Hamilton’s afternoon ended earlier than anyone else’s among the front-runners. Ferrari confirmed it would investigate the sudden brake failure. Later in the week he rejected reports that he had asked for members of his working group to be replaced, saying he had “never asked” for staff to be removed and wanted people around him to be “the best version of themselves.” Fred Vasseur, looking beyond 2026, said permitted power-unit upgrades this season would bring only incremental gains and that Ferrari is planning a new engine for 2027. The Scuderia also announced that Rakuten will become a team partner in telecommunications and e-commerce from 2027.

Ten Sprints, two returning countries, one unsettled ending

On 16 September the FIA and Formula 1 published the 2027 calendar after World Motor Sport Council approval: 24 Grands Prix across 22 countries, pre-season testing in Bahrain from 24–27 February, and a season scheduled to open in Sakhir on 14 March. Portugal returns at Portimão on 20 June. Turkey returns at Istanbul Park on 3 October. The Dutch Grand Prix will not continue after 2026. Barcelona drops from an annual slot as Spain’s race stays in Madrid.

The structural change is the Sprint. The format grows from six weekends to ten. First-time Sprint hosts are Bahrain, Australia, Japan, Monaco and Abu Dhabi. The other five are Canada, Britain, Italy, São Paulo and Qatar. Formula 1 said Sprint weekends draw 12 percent more total viewership than non-Sprint weekends. Monaco will therefore run two qualifying sessions on the same streets that have always treated traffic as a design feature, not a rounding error.

• 2027 opens in Bahrain and is scheduled to close in Abu Dhabi on 12 December, both as Sprint weekends.
• Portugal and Turkey return for the first time since their pandemic-era races in 2021.
• The 2026 finale remains the live problem: Qatar and Abu Dhabi are still on this year’s map, but reporting through the week treated a possible Imola substitute as increasingly plausible while conflict in the Middle East continues.

That last point sat under every calendar conversation. The 2027 document assumes a conventional close in the Gulf. The 2026 document is not yet safe. Autosport, The Athletic and others spent the week asking which circuit should host a rearranged finale if the last two races cannot run. Imola was the name that kept returning.

The champion who almost left

Verstappen finished second in Madrid and remains sixth in the standings, 147 points behind Antonelli, still without a Grand Prix win in 2026. The more durable story of his week came from an interview with Bild, reported across Europe from 15 September. He said he had been closer to quitting Formula 1 than to signing for another team before he extended with Red Bull through 2030 in August.

“You have to take every conversation with another team seriously. But in the end I was closer to quitting Formula 1 than signing a contract with another team. I seriously considered quitting. But in the end, I love racing.”

— Max Verstappen, speaking to Bild

He also completed Red Bull’s “Max vs 100” karting challenge at Silverstone, clearing the field of amateur drivers in 35 minutes after eliminating 64 of them on the opening lap. It was a sideshow. It was also a reminder that the man in sixth still treats speed as a private argument with himself.

The rest of the factory floor

Alpine appointed former Mercedes technical chief Mike Elliott as chief technical officer at Enstone, a hire aimed at turning recent improvement into a stable top-four team. Honda named Yoichiro Fukao to lead its Formula 1 power-unit programme from 1 October, replacing Tetsushi Kakuda as the manufacturer prepares the next phase of its work with Aston Martin. Jack Doohan completed his first driving day in a Haas at Jerez. Williams said it will take a new chassis and associated parts to Baku. Ferrari and Racing Bulls ran 400 laps at Imola as Pirelli evaluated its three softest prototype compounds for 2027.

On the support bill in Madrid, Ugo Ugochukwu became the first American FIA Formula 3 champion. Campos Racing completed a drivers’ and teams’ title double at home. Romain Grosjean withdrew criticism of Zak Brown after accepting that he had misunderstood the McLaren chief’s comments about Oscar Piastri. A proposed class-action suit named Cadillac shareholder Mark Walter and companies in his wider network; the Formula 1 team itself was not listed as a defendant.

The week between Madrid and Baku did not change the identity of the title fight. It clarified the terms. Antonelli keeps winning races that other people think they should have won. Norris keeps producing the lap that should have been enough. Verstappen keeps finishing on the podium in a car that has not yet given him a Sunday. Hamilton is investigating a brake. Formula 1, meanwhile, has sold the world ten Sprints and a Monaco Saturday that will be unlike any Monaco Saturday before it — while still not being able to say, with a straight face, where this season ends.

That is the state of the championship as the cars pack for the Caspian. The leader is twenty years old and already eight times a winner. The circuit that just hosted him is already being redesigned in public. The calendar that follows him is already being rewritten by events no steward can control.