The United States Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas is Kimi Antonelli’s first mathematical chance to seal the championship, and it is realistically Verstappen’s last chance to stay in it. If Antonelli outscores him by six points or more in Austin, the four-time champion is out of the title race with five rounds left on the calendar.

That is only half the story heading into Texas. Verstappen is fourth, 119 points behind Antonelli but just 17 behind Russell and eight behind Hamilton, with 150 points still available. The real question most of the paddock is now asking is not whether he can catch Antonelli, but who he passes on the way back.

The resurgence is built on two wins

Verstappen has put himself in that conversation by winning the Singapore Grand Prix on 11 October, his second straight victory after Malaysia and his first win in Singapore in a career that has now reached 250 starts. He defended the lead into Turn 1 against Charles Leclerc, built a gap, and never looked threatened across 62 laps around Marina Bay.

“It’s taken a while, but I think this race was very good.”

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“We had pace when we needed to have it on the soft tyre and on the medium,” Verstappen said after the win.

Antonelli finished third in Singapore, which extended his lead over Russell to 102 points. Russell was ninth, Hamilton sixth. The Mercedes garage was in a very different mood from the one Verstappen was in.

Readers back him to beat the Mercedes pair

Verstappen’s two-win surge has swung sentiment hard. A reader poll run by RacingNews365 found that 60.5 percent of respondents expect him to finish second in the drivers’ standings behind Antonelli. Hamilton was next on 21.2 percent, Russell on 11.9 percent, Leclerc on 6.2 percent and Lando Norris on just 1 percent.

Verstappen has podiumed in seven of his last eight races, and the two Mercedes drivers are suddenly carving each other up for second rather than pulling clear.

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Antonelli’s clinch window in Austin is narrow

Antonelli can clinch the title in Texas, but the scenario is narrow: he has to win the race, Russell has to finish outside the top ten, and Hamilton outside the top five. If any of those slip, the fight rolls on into Mexico City the following weekend.

Verstappen, meanwhile, needs the opposite kind of weekend. A third straight win, with Antonelli, Hamilton, and Russell behind him, would keep the title mathematically alive and shrink the gap to Russell to single digits.

Lights go out at the Circuit of the Americas at 3pm local time on Sunday, 25 October.

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