The Italian Grand Prix begins on Friday with the championship leader already knowing where he will line up on Sunday: somewhere near the back. Kimi Antonelli takes a full power-unit change at Monza, a penalty Mercedes has been carrying since Barcelona and has chosen to pay in front of his own crowd. "Our calculations say that that's the best track to take it," Toto Wolff said — and the calculation is defensible, because Monza's straights suit the Mercedes engine and its braking zones make a recovery drive plausible. Defensible is not the same as popular in Italy.

He can afford it. Antonelli leads on 242 points, with George Russell and Lewis Hamilton tied 59 behind on 183 and Lando Norris a further 24 back after winning at Zandvoort. Mercedes lead the constructors' championship 425 to Ferrari's 338 — a gap of 87 that Ferrari have spent the whole summer failing to close, and which they now have to look at from the middle of the grandstand that cares about it most.

Maranello will lean on the past instead. This weekend marks thirty years since Schumacher's first Monza win for Ferrari and twenty since his last, and Hamilton and Charles Leclerc will run special suits carrying his logo and seven stars. Behind them, Red Bull still cannot confirm its own line-up: Isack Hadjar's wrist injury is unresolved and Liam Lawson, thrown into the car at Zandvoort with barely any running, qualified within touching distance of Verstappen and finished seventh. Lights out at 15:00 local, 13:00 UTC.

Alex Palou closed out the 2026 NTT IndyCar Series championship before the season did, becoming only the second driver in the history of American open-wheel racing to take four titles in a row — Sébastien Bourdais, 2004 to 2007, is the other. At 29 he is the youngest five-time champion the series has had, and the only names above him on the all-time list are A.J. Foyt on seven and his own team-mate Scott Dixon on six.

Which leaves the Grand Prix of Monterey to sort out the rest: David Malukas on 374 holds second by four points from Kyle Kirkwood, with Christian Lundgaard on 353 and Pato O'Ward on 336 both still in range. Green flag Sunday, 2:30pm Eastern.