The year is 1992, and Nigel Mansell, who retired at the end of 1990, has just won the San Marino Grand Prix.
For Mansell, who would go on to develop a reputation for announcing his retirement before confirming a new contract, it was a fifth successive victory from the first five rounds of the season, cementing an early 25-point lead for the Englishman over Williams teammate Riccardo Patrese.
With just 10 points available for victory and only the top six scoring, it was a hearty lead indeed.
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Mansell was in the prime of his career in his 13th season.
He’d finished second in the championship three times over his already 12-year career, most famously in 1986, when he lost what should have been a comfortable lead over rival Alain Prost in a tyre explosion at the season-ending Australian Grand Prix.
A lamentable two-year stint with Ferrari, where he was designated number two to Gerhard Berger and then to Prost, is what prompted him to announce his retirement at the end of 1990, but Frank Williams convinced him to reverse his decision with a contract that guaranteed him number one status over Patrese.
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He repaid the faith with a strong 1991 campaign, finishing a competitive second despite retiring from the first three races of the season, in part due to a new temperamental gearbox design.
But in 1992, with the car’s gearbox problems solved, Mansell got on a roll. If his car saw the chequered flag, he was either first or second over the line. He took all but two pole positions.
The championship, in his 13th campaign, quickly became a formality, and he sealed the deal with second place at the Hungarian Grand Prix with five rounds remaining.
It was the earliest anyone had ever won their maiden championship.
That remains the case — perhaps until this weekend.
When Andrea Kimi Antonelli dons his overalls and helmet for Sunday’s United States Grand Prix, he’ll be attempting to match Mansell’s remarkable record.
HOW ANTONELLI CAN WIN IT
Austin is round 18 of 23 of the 2026 season; five races, including Qatar and Abu Dhabi, will remain after this weekend.
Antonelli has his first championship chance.
His lead over teammate George Russell is 102 points. Lewis Hamilton (111 points), Max Verstappen (119 points), Charles Leclerc (125 points) and Lando Norris (139 points) are all also in contention.
His lead over all of them must be at least 125 points at the end of the race to seal the deal.
The path to clinching the crown this weekend is narrow but far from impossible.
It’s also straightforward.
Antonelli must win the grand prix. Russell must finish no higher than ninth, and Hamilton can finish no higher than fifth.
That arrangement would see him tied with Russell but ahead on countback — he’d have an unreachable nine victories to his teammate’s three with five rounds remaining.
Any other result would see the championship continue to Mexico, where he’d need a lead of only 100 points to complete the job.
“It would be a dream,” Antonelli said. “It’s something I’ve dreamt of since I was little.
“First of all, to find myself in such a position is incredible. But at the same time, I need to keep going, keep pushing, and it’s not over yet.
“It definitely is crazy if you think about it, but that’s why I won’t think about it.
“We had a meeting with Bono (race engineer Pete Bonnington) this morning, and we just said, ‘Just have fun.’ It’s always the same mindset I’ve had all year: one race at a time. Just try to do the best I can every race weekend, and then we’ll see.
“But of course if I do things well, then the result will come.”
We are on the precipice of history.
VERSTAPPEN IN FORM — BUT WORRIED ABOUT SPINE DAMAGE
The driver most likely to spoil Antonelli’s early coronation is Max Verstappen, who’s best placed to deny him the crucial victory he needs to seal the deal.
Red Bull Racing has surged since its Azerbaijan upgrade, with Verstappen on a two-race victory streak that was 0.2s away from becoming three in Baku. Mercedes believes it’s now the outright fastest package.
But to win the race, he’ll need to make it to the flag unscathed — something he said was unlikely given the dire state of the Circuit of the Americas.
The track is notoriously bumpy, which organisers say is because it was built on the shifting soils of a former marshland.
It’s a long-running irritation not just of Formula 1 drivers but of MotoGP riders too.
Verstappen, a four-time winner at the venue, has now stepped up his criticism, describing the bumps as “unacceptable” and declaring the circuit a health hazard.
“You can use the excuse that the soil is the problem, but then you should have known that, and you need to make sure that you reinforce it more,” he said.
“Last year, for example, you pull around 5–6g in a corner, but I had some impacts, vertical load, which was over 9g on my spine, which I can tell you is really not fun.
“Especially the older you get, you think about that more and more.”
He said he was particularly concerned about this year because of the 2026 regulations, which will result in the cars running lower through the corners than last season.
“You bottom out way harder,” he said.
“I can tell you from the checks that I’ve done from my spine, the bottom end doesn’t look that great.
“I know that’s part of racing. I know that can be part of sport, but it’s also further damage from the cars that we had the last few years.
“And now if we continue with finding this acceptable to drive on, then you are going to suffer with that much more.”
Verstappen isn’t the sort of driver to be put off his game easily, so it’s unlikely this will weaken his resolve to win.
But the bumps are, if nothing else, a set-up problem.
The bumpiness of the road played a role in Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc being disqualified from the 2023 race — then for Mercedes and Ferrari — because the teams had set their ride height too low.
With three practice sessions, the odds of a repeat are low, but raising the ride height is always a performance compromise, and some will be tempted to run lower than others — at the risk of car damage or, according to Verstappen, driver damage.
Others may find their cars out of the set-up window as a result.
It will be interesting to see whether that has an effect on the competitive order.
PIASTRI ‘HAPPY’ WITH POST-SINGAPORE DISCUSSIONS
McLaren arrived in Austin wanting to have drawn a line under the crash between Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris that became a major talking point at the Singapore Grand Prix.
Team boss Andrea Stella said in Singapore that talks about the breakdown in the team-first philosophy would continue leading into this weekend’s grand prix, with meetings taking place to ensure the drivers are on the same page for the rest of the campaign.
Though the team was careful not to apportion blame to either driver in the immediate aftermath, it was clear from Norris’s eventual apologies that the world champion had been deemed predominantly at fault behind closed doors.
Speaking ahead of the weekend, Piastri said he was satisfied with the way the talks had continued at the factory.
“I’ve been happy with how things have been dealt with,” he said. “I think the team, Zak (Brown, CEO) and Andrea have handled things the way they should have been, so that’s been fine.
“I think it was dealt with appropriately and we’re ready to go racing.”
Norris was similarly brief answering questions about the matter and appeared unwilling to revisit the situation.
“(We were able to learn) a lot, but we’re in Austin now, so I’m looking forward to this weekend, putting the past behind me,” he said.
When pressed, he added: “I got plenty of telling-off and plenty of words have been said.
“We’re still allowed to race, but of course we can’t have what happened last weekend and what happened even say here last year. We can’t have that happening.
“We’re allowed to race, but obviously we can’t have a coming together. We have to avoid that.”
Norris’s reference to last year was the crash Piastri triggered at the first turn of the sprint that cleaned up the Briton as collateral damage.
This was at the height of the ‘papaya rules’ era. Norris had been retrospectively punished for hitting Piastri on the first lap in Singapore, the consequence of which was that the Australian was to be given priority order in qualifying for the rest of the season. That punishment was immediately rescinded after the Austin crash.
Unlike last year, there’s no drivers title on the line, but second place in the constructors championship is still up for grabs — though the lost points in Singapore mean Red Bull Racing is within seven points of demoting McLaren to fourth.
“It’s been a challenging year for us, definitely,” Piastri said. “I think in the middle of the season we felt like we’d gained some momentum and potentially we were back to being able to fight for wins and regular podiums, but that’s often the way in Formula 1 — you think you’re there again and you’ve got a few teams around you to pull you down a few pegs.
“Hopefully we can find a bit more performance in the rest of the season.”
The Circuit of the Americas will suit the McLaren better than Singapore, with more corner variety, though the long back straight and the tight finale sector will be difficult.
The team will also benefit from some upgrades — though whether it puts it back in podium contention remains a question.
SAINZ REVEALS TENSION OVER MIDDLE EAST CALL
Austin is the fourth race of a run of nine grands prix in just 11 weekends, and it’s the last two of them, in Qatar and Abu Dhabi, causing the paddock consternation.
Formula 1’s resolve to return to the Middle East has hardened in the last month, and this week FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem said hosting both races would be “fine” despite also preparing to announce the Dakar Rally will move from Saudi Arabia to Europe and Africa in January owing to conflict in the region, according to Reuters.
Most drivers have played questions about the races with a straight bat, but Carlos Sainz, a director of the Grand Prix Drivers Association, strayed from the line when asked about the sport’s commitment to returning to the Middle East.
“I think (the FIA) seem very convinced that it’s going to go ahead,” he said.
“I think on my personal side, and not speaking as the GPDA, it’s very difficult to be convinced right now because there are still things happening in the Middle East, and also there is obviously an election that is going to happen in the US and things that are going to happen on the political side of the world that could affect the next month, month and a half, very suddenly.
“I think it’s relatively premature to be so convinced, but as it stands, we would go to Qatar and Abu Dhabi.
“If the FIA and Formula 1 decide that it’s still a safe and good scenario, I think we as drivers have to go with whatever they say. It’s not like we have as much political information, as much inside information as they have, for sure. So, we need to follow their lead and trust in their decision-making.
“But only as it stands, I think the world can change a lot in the next month, one month and a half, and we need to stay diligent and reactive to whatever happens, and not just go because we want to go right now.”
His Williams team later released a statement on his behalf.
“Following some reporting of my comments in the press conference earlier today about ending the season in the Middle East, I want to be clear that I know the FIA and Formula 1 will put safety first and completely trust them to make the right decision. We look forward to racing in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.”
But it’s clear there’s far more friction behind the scenes about F1’s decision to race.
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