Scott Mitchell-Malm

But he's not really in championship contention and George is going to walk away with this.

And four races later, the points lead is obviously massively, massively in Antonelli's favour.

The form is in his favour.

The narrative is in his favour.

So it's legitimate to say, it's perfectly legitimate to say that Antonelli is not only the favourite, but it's his to lose and all of this stuff.

And yes, the disruption to the calendar has impacted how many races we've had and whatever.

But four races ago, everybody was saying that this guy's not in the championship fight this year.

And now everybody's saying he's basically got it won already.

So I mention that and talk about that just to basically put it into context how much this stuff can swing.

I would say it's also evidence that Antonelli has upped his game to a level that surely has even surprised Mercedes-Benz.

internally and the speed with which he has just worked out how to crank out the performances consistently is really really impressive i think we've mentioned this before but it's a little bit similar to what we saw from piastri early in year three versus year two and you know you were talking ed in the terms of it feels like he's skipped a year in terms of that that trajectory you would expect it's absolutely the same for antonelli he underachieved in year one and i would say he's overachieving in year two versus expectations

Yeah, I've done a relatively deep dive into this for a piece that's run on the website because Andrea Stella, the McLaren boss, was talking over the weekend about its reliability and performance problems and effectively saying that for the first time it has felt on the back foot as a customer.

I think there may be a degree of McLaren underestimating the advantage that Mercedes could have as a works team in 2026.

Now, part of that could potentially have been foreseeable.

There was maybe a little bit of being too misled by the perks that it enjoyed as a...

Effectively a pseudo-works team by the end of the previous engine rules cycle because the homologations had been frozen.

There was nothing really more to be tweaked or gained from that side.

And McLaren had established itself as the best Mercedes team from a chassis point of view.

So for...

Mercedes to win championships as an engine maker, there was obviously every reason to support McLaren's request for information, communication, prioritising it as much as the works team.