What is the earliest a driver has won the F1 World Championship?
Antonelli is also set to become just the third driver after Jacques Villeneuve (1997) and Lewis Hamilton (2008) to win the driver’s world title in their sophomore year. | Photo Credit: AP
Antonelli is also set to become just the third driver after Jacques Villeneuve (1997) and Lewis Hamilton (2008) to win the driver’s world title in their sophomore year. | Photo Credit: AP
Kimi Antonelli is within striking distance of rewriting Formula 1 history.
He is on course to not only become F1’s youngest world champion but also one of the earliest to do so, in terms of races left in a season.
Antonelli is also set to become just the third driver after Jacques Villeneuve (1997) and Lewis Hamilton (2008) to win the driver’s world title in their sophomore year.
If Antonelli wins the title in Mexico, which in all likelihood is bound to happen, then the 20-year-old will have a cushion of four races to see out the 2026 season as world champion.
Formula 1 is used to seeing title fights being hotly contested up until the last race (32 out of 75 seasons) multiple times in the past, including 2021 and 2025 most recently, so Antonelli’s achievement would be out of the ordinary in that regard.
Seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher holds the record for the most races in hand as World Champion with six in the 2002 season. Schumacher, driving the famous Ferrari F2002, clinched the title at the French Grand Prix in July.
It capped off the German’s fifth F1 driver’s title, in a season where he finished on the podium in every single race.
Schumacher finished the season with 144 points, 67 points ahead of teammate Rubens Barichello in second and 94 points ahead of Williams’s Juan Pablo Montoya in third.
Published on Oct 31, 2026
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