Sao Paulo (AFP) – A week after the coronation of its driver Kimi Antonelli, the youngest world champion in F1 history, the Mercedes team can win the constructor's title this weekend at the Brazilian GP, which will also see Max Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton and George Russell fight for second place in the standings.
Published on: 05/11/2026 - 23:18 Modified on: 05/11/2026 - 23:59
This 20th round of the season at the Autódromo José Carlos Pace, known by its original name "Interlagos" in Sao Paulo, also occurs in full tension between the Ferrari drivers, Lewis Hamilton (3rd in the provisional standings) and Charles Leclerc (5th), who almost crashed at the Mexican GP last Sunday.
The Scuderia is 126 points behind Mercedes in the Constructors' World Championship and the German team will win its ninth title if it scores three points more than the Italian this Sunday.
“All I can promise is that for the rest of this season, and the next, I will give everything to return to the performances of which I have been capable most of the time in my career,” declared the Briton Russell, 28, completely surpassed this season by the Italian Antonelli, 20, as evidenced by his disappointing sixth place in Mexico on Sunday and his fall to 4th place in the provisional ranking.
With four GPs (Brazil, Las Vegas, Qatar and Abu Dhabi) remaining at the end of the season - if those in the Gulf take place, depending on the military situation in the Middle East - Russell is ahead of his compatriot with seven world crowns, Hamilton (3rd), and by the Dutchman Max Verstappen who has four and who has made a spectacular rise since the last Grands Prix, up to 2nd place in the ranking.
Russell, who considered himself the favorite at the start of the season, was self-critical and congratulated his Italian teammate, while "crossing his fingers that luck will return a little", while he suffered a series of blows of fate and mechanical damage with his Mercedes.
Antonelli, new “pilot model”
Antonelli won nine Grands Prix in his second season in F1 and was third in Mexico, propelled to the top as the youngest world champion in the history of the discipline and the first Italian since Alberto Ascari in 1953.
The photo of the young man with the face of an adolescent, carried in triumph on the podium in Mexico by the "veterans" Hamilton (41 years old) and Verstappen (29 years old) went around the world and Antonelli promised to "hang it at (his) house".
He had been spotted as a child, chosen and nurtured by the Mercedes industry and the boss of the F1 team, Toto Wolff, who praised in a long internal email made public Thursday, "his humility, integrity and loyalty, mixed with extraordinary ambition and determination".
The young Italian embodies in the eyes of the Austrian businessman, a new “pilot model” contrary to that “of the past (...) who wants to win at all costs, selfish, opportunistic and ruthless”.
Wolff did not forget Russell, “a champion and No. 1 driver” for Mercedes, but whose year it was “not”.
Hamilton “annoyed” by Leclerc
Sao Paulo will also be an opportunity, perhaps, to appease the Ferrari clan.
Hamilton said Thursday that he was "obviously annoyed" by his Monegasque teammate Leclerc who had almost caught him while trying to overtake him at the start of the race in Mexico.
Verstappen took the opportunity to win his third victory of the year in four races, thanks to the Red Bull in full rebirth, to the great dismay of Hamilton who was aiming for a Ferrari double.
Perhaps to console the English forty-year-old, his Spanish elder Fernando Alonso, 45 years old and 444 F1 Grands Prix on the clock, congratulated him on his 400th in Brazil.
It would have been the 200th for Frenchman Esteban Ocon, but he was fired by the American team Haas, after rumors of an altercation with its Japanese director Ayao Komatsu.
The thirty-year-old from Normandy is replaced by the 21-year-old Brazilian beginner, Rafael Camara, from the Ferrari sector, engine manufacturer for Haas.
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© 2026 AFP
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