45 points clear after Spa — is the 2026 title already decided?
Six wins from the races so far and a 45-point championship lead is the kind of margin that starts conversations about the title being over before summer break. Historically that gap is very hard to close over the back half of a season unless something goes badly wrong for the leader. Detto questo, F1 has a habit of humbling anyone who declares a title 'decided' in July. Reliability gremlins, a bad run of luck, one crash at the wrong moment — it's happened to bigger cushions than this before. Who's still mathematically believing in a comeback at this point, and from whom?