How much of Antonelli's success is down to his ability? - F1 Q&A

This weekend, both Mercedes drivers had the new upgrades but Kimi Antonelli dominated qualifying and the race while George Russell didn't quite achieve the same success. There is a theme throughout the season. How much of that is down to driver ability, driving style etc and how much is down to car set-up and strategy. Is George better than this or has he reached his limit? - Julian

The dominant theme of the 2026 season has been the degree to which Kimi Antonelli has stepped up his game after a mixed rookie season that contained some definite highs, but also quite a few difficulties.

In doing so, he has overwhelmed George Russell, who has accepted and is more than willing to say that Antonelli has simply done a better job than him this season.

Antonelli's performances this year have lived up to the billing with which he came to F1 - that he could be the sport's next generational talent.

He has had some luck, and some of his wins have turned on fortune - safety cars in Japan and Madrid, for example.

But he has also performed at a level of consistent excellence, and produced some absolutely standout performances, most obviously Monaco, Monza and Austin.

The Mercedes has on average been the best car, but Antonelli is the only one of the team's two drivers who has always been a factor. He fully deserves the world title that he is almost certain to clinch this weekend in Mexico City.

As for Russell, he has fundamentally used driving style as an explanation for his relative struggles, saying the previous cars suited his, and the new ones Antonelli's. He has won only three races compared with Antonelli's nine.

On Sunday, team principal Toto Wolff said Russell had struggled in Austin to get the right set-up on the Mercedes with the new upgrade package, which has been problematic since it was introduced in Malaysia.

Wolff said: "George, for all of us in the team, is a champion and has won in every category and merits to be put in the group of the very best ones. And we've seen that last year.

"This year, we see this variability in results. When we land the car in the way that suits him, he's absolutely fine. But when it drops out of that operational window, he struggles and he struggles more than maybe Kimi. And that is on us.

"We just have to work it out with him how there can be such a difference in driving, in performance, because George is not half a second slower, three tenths slower than Kimi. That's just absolutely not the case.

"So what is it that he doesn't like? What is it that we need to do in terms of modifying the car, setting it up in a different way for him to go fast? Because it's all about the intelligence, the ability, the determination."

Driving style and set-up are genuine reasons for a driver to struggle in certain circumstances.

However, it's also a case that the absolute elite, the all-time greats - drivers such as Max Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso - tend to find a way to be at the top of their game regardless of the car's behaviour.

The worry for Russell right now is that if Antonelli is at that level - and it looks as though he has the potential to be, given his performances in only his second season - he will have his work cut out to beat him consistently in the future.

So he needs to regroup over the winter, come back next year and prove he can get back on to Antonelli's level.

With Lewis Hamilton's intentions clear of staying in F1 until there is an African Grand Prix, which I think will most likely be with Ferrari, what does that mean for the young talents who desire to drive for Ferrari? Will it be at least another four to five years before we see new drivers replacing either or both Lewis and Charles Leclerc? - Liam

Lewis Hamilton repeated in Austin last weekend that, ideally, he would like to still be racing when Formula 1 returns to Africa.

"I'm now forced to have to stay a lot longer because we have a race in Africa and that's been my dream, to be able to race in Africa," he said.

"So, yes, I have to keep fighting to try and stay fit. If I can still punch out good results over the next year, we'll keep it going."

Whether he can manage to stay that long is another question.

Formula 1 has said the African Grand Prix in Rwanda will be held in the "early 2030s".

The aim is for that to be in 2030 but it's not clear whether the new track will be ready by then.

Even if they make that deadline, will Hamilton still be racing? He will be 45 at the start of 2030. That's the same age as Fernando Alonso is now, and he is still going strong.

Hamilton's answer alludes to his current contract, which it is believed lasts until the end of 2027. So he would need to do another one of three years to make it to 2030.

As he says, if he is still performing at the level he is now by the middle of next year, why not? But as yet it's not clear what Ferrari will think about that.

Hamilton's presence - and the long-term contract held by team-mate Charles Leclerc - does raise questions about Ferrari's driver academy.

First and foremost, those questions surround Oliver Bearman, who is yet to finalise his new contract with Haas for next season.

Bearman has had a strong season and a new deal is believed to be pretty much a formality - driver and team have expressed their desire to stay together, and the Briton was talking in a BBC 5 live interview at the weekend very much as if he would still be a Haas driver next year.

But Bearman has higher ambitions than staying at Haas for the rest of his career.

If Hamilton and Leclerc are going to be at Ferrari for the next four years, Bearman would have every right to be asking the team what that means for him.

If he isn't going to get into the senior team, what can they do to further his career? Do they let him go, so he can pursue his ambitions elsewhere, or do they allow him to do that while still maintaining links?

These questions become even more pressing for Bearman now Brazilian Rafael Camara - also a Ferrari young driver - is joining Haas for 2027.

Bearman needs to beat the Brazilian if he is not to face an existential threat to his future as a potential driver for a top team.

What's been happening with Alex Albon this season? Williams team-mate Carlos Sainz seems to have the better of him, and the car doesn't look to be in a good place. - David

Of the two Williams drivers, in a team that is struggling, Carlos Sainz has had the better season.

But it's not as stark as it perhaps appears just looking on the surface.

Sainz leads Albon by two points in the championship, and while the qualifying comparison is skewed heavily towards Sainz on a head-to-head basis at 13-5, the time gap between them is 0.115 seconds.

As if Albon was not already having a rough season, to top it he incurred the wrath of Fernando Alonso in Austin after the two collided on the first lap, leaving both with damaged cars.

Alonso said: "The quality of the drivers in the lower third of the grid is very low, as we saw today with Alex."

Williams are in such a state this year that comparing the drivers should be treated with a degree of qualification.

The car has been slow, and the team have struggled with consistency between parts, as well as quality and degradation.

In other words, two parts that should perform the same have not always done so, and some of them wear out and lose performance quicker than others.

Of course that works across both drivers but it does make comparisons difficult.

Albon was asked about the comparison with Sainz in qualifying in Monza last month.

He pointed out that the crash he had in Canada when he hit a groundhog had been costly because there was a new engine in the car that weekend, which was written off. That meant he had to run an old engine longer than ideal.

And he alluded to Williams suffering from the same issues with varying engine performance that happened in the early days of the new engine rules at Mercedes and McLaren.

"There's a few things," Albon said. "In the beginning of the year, it was very battery-dominated.

"If you think even just the George and Kimi situation, that's the manufacturer side of it having issues. So you can imagine it's not just them two that have had problems.

"There's been a few qualifying sessions where the corners have been good, but you don't see it in the lap time. It's on the stopwatch.

"And then we're also going through our own issues as a team. And that's not just on my side. There's also a side where to say that both cars are performing in the same way would not be true. We've been fighting some inconsistencies in the cars that's been there since the beginning of the year.

"We're much better now at getting on top of them. If you look at the last four or five weekends, we're actually very close in terms of performance. But it's taken a while to get there."

Do you foresee a world in which live F1 coverage ever returns to free-to-air telly in the UK or is it now stuck behind a paywall for eternity? I've now taken a different career path but becoming an engineer in F1 was my ultimate ambition when I was applying for university in the early 2010s, inspired by BBC's live coverage. - Ian

In the UK, the current situation is that Sky has exclusive rights to broadcast F1 behind a paywall, while Channel 4 has highlights on free-to-air television, with live coverage of the British Grand Prix.

Sky has the rights until the end of 2034, after it struck a new deal for a larger fee earlier this year.

That came in the wake of Apple buying the US rights starting from this season.

At the same time, the television market is in flux as streaming becomes increasingly prevalent as a means of consuming content.

In that context, as well as the wider sports broadcast situation, it's hard to imagine a situation where F1 could return fully to free-to-air television.

The wider picture is it is still on free-to-air in some countries - Brazil as an example.

But F1 would also argue free-to-air does not always mean more people getting sight of the sport, depending on how it's promoted in various ways, and viewing habits are not the same in all countries.

Social media output is also an important consideration. At the same time, F1 is a business that exists to make money.