Max Verstappen’s title defence is over. The Red Bull driver crossed the line third at Sunday’s United States Grand Prix in Austin, 17.485 seconds behind race winner Kimi Antonelli, and with five rounds still to run he can no longer catch the 20-year-old Italian in the drivers’ standings.

The numbers are brutal. Antonelli sits on 365 points, Verstappen on 236. Even a clean sweep of race wins from Mexico City through Abu Dhabi, with Antonelli scoring zero in return, would leave Verstappen four points short.

It is the earliest Verstappen has been knocked out of a championship fight since 2020, the year before his run of four straight titles began. In 2025 he came within two points of a fifth, chasing Lando Norris all the way to the Abu Dhabi finale and winning that race.

A tyre call Red Bull got wrong

Verstappen qualified second and never had the pace to fight for the win. Mercedes made a medium-to-hard one-stop work from pole; Red Bull committed to softs and were forced into two stops.

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Verstappen was blunt about the afternoon, as reported by PlanetF1.

“Pretty frustrating to be honest. Just not a really good race for us.”

He described the power unit behaving differently from one lap and one corner to the next, which he said made it impossible to build a rhythm. Even so, his verdict on Antonelli’s pace was flat.

“Even if we would have done the tyres in the right order or chosen the right compounds, I don’t think we had the pace of Kimi,” he told reporters.

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Antonelli’s ninth win edges him to the title

For Antonelli, this was his ninth victory of the season and a first pole position since the Belgian Grand Prix in July, eight rounds earlier. He led every lap that mattered and finished 13.078s ahead of Charles Leclerc, with Verstappen a further four seconds back.

“It was the result we needed,” Antonelli said after the race. “Really happy we made it stick. Today was a great team effort.”

The Mercedes driver can clinch the championship at the Mexico City Grand Prix next weekend by finishing ninth or better, or by neither George Russell nor Lewis Hamilton winning the race.

What is left for Red Bull

Second in the drivers’ standings is the only prize still in play. Verstappen is six points behind Russell and five behind Hamilton, with five rounds to swing at them.

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The Mexico City Grand Prix weekend runs from 30 October to 1 November, with the race on Sunday at 14:00 local time.

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