While McLaren's Lando Norris earned his first win as reigning Formula 1 world champion in Sunday's Hungarian Grand Prix at the Hungaroring, it was Mercedes' Kimi Antonelli who padded his world championship lead, as he's been doing for much of the 2026 season, with a third place finish.
The 20-year-old Italian is 50 points ahead of Ferrari's Lewis Hamilton and 59 ahead of teammate George Russell. With six victories in 11 starts, including the first five of his career in consecutive races, he has twice as many wins as his two closest rivals combined.
Following the addition of the "Bahrain" Grand Prix (in Malaysia) at Sepang International Circuit, the 2026 season is set to consist of 23 races, so at the summer break, the season technically isn't yet halfway over.
There is still a long way to go, and as we saw a year ago when Red Bull's Max Verstappen overcame a 104-point deficit to McLaren's Oscar Piastri and fell just two points shy of winning what would have been a fifth straight world title over Norris, this year's battle is far from finished.
3 F1 world champions in 3 years?
But with McLaren clearly not where they were a year ago, Norris fifth in the standings, Red Bull's car being a wild card every weekend, and Verstappen still winless in sixth, Formula 1 is set up to see something it hasn't seen in years.
It's been over a decade and a half since Formula 1 had three different world champions in three years.
From 2006 to 2010, there were five in five years. Fernando Alonso won his second in a row in 2006 before Kimi Raikkonen won his title in 2007, Hamilton won the first of his seven in 2008, Jenson Button won his in 2009, and Sebastian Vettel won the first of his four in a row in 2010.
From 2010 to 2024, on only one occasion was the world champion not at least a back-to-back world champion. Nico Rosberg won his one and only title in 2016, but he retired after the season ended. However, Hamilton, world champion in 2014 and 2015, then won four in a row from 2017 to 2020.
Verstappen then won four straight from 2021 to 2024, prior to Norris' 2025 triumph.
So if anybody other than the 28-year-old Dutchman or the 26-year-old Briton wins this year's world championship, which seems extremely likely at this stage in the season, F1 will have seen something that most recently happened several regulation changes ago, and something that many fans might have once thought wouldn't happen at any point in the near future, given the lack of parity that has existed in the sport during most of those seasons.
Formula 1 action is scheduled to get back underway following the summer break with the 2026 season's 12th race, the Dutch Grand Prix at Circuit Zandvoort, on Sunday, August 23.
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