The 2026 F1 season is three rounds old, with the drivers having contested the Australian, Chinese and Japanese Grands Prix, with one Sprint thrown in for good measure.
But while there have been plenty of overtakes, a few shocks and one very young Championship leader, there have also been some truly strange stats thrown up from the opening three rounds – not least by said leader, Kimi Antonelli…
Antonelli’s record-breaking feats
Antonelli is the youngest ever driver to lead the Formula 1 World Championship at just 19 years of age. For context, the Italian was born on the August 25, 2006 – after Fernando Alonso had won his first title with Renault, and when he was well on the way to his second.
Lewis Hamilton was 22 years old when he made his F1 debut in 2007 and was the previous youngest driver to lead the Championship, with Antonelli eclipsing the seven-time World Champion by three years.
To put Antonelli’s achievements of winning two races as a 19-year-old into yet more context, Max Verstappen won just one race as a teenager – Spain 2016. By the time he won in Malaysia and Mexico in 2017, the Dutchman had turned 20.
As if that wasn’t enough, Antonelli is the first Italian to win back-to-back races since 1953 when Alberto Ascari achieved the feat. Ascari won the title in 1953 too…
The oldest podium in F1 history was in the inaugural season, when Nino Farina, Luigi Fagioli and Louis Rosier finished on the rostrum in Switzerland. They had a combined age of over 140 years, or an average of over 46 years.
Contrast that to Japan, when Antonelli, Oscar Piastri and Charles Leclerc could only muster a combined age of just under 73 years on the podium, or an average of just over 24 years.
Before we move away from the Mercedes prospect, one more interesting thing to note from the first three rounds of the season is that Antonelli has acheived back-to-back wins in his career before George Russell.
Hamilton’s return to the rostrum
Onto Hamilton, who managed to achieve his first podium for Ferrari in Shanghai at the 26th time of asking, having not made it onto the rostrum in his first season with the Scuderia. By contrast, his first podium with McLaren in his rookie year took just one race – he finished third on debut in Australia.
And as for his Mercedes record, Hamilton made it to the podium in just his second race with the Silver Arrows.
McLaren’s initial 2026 challenge
Over to last year’s World Champions McLaren, who have had a topsy-turvy start to the new season. Piastri was unable to start either of the first two Grands Prix, after crashing on his way to the grid in Australia, before an electrical issue stopped him starting in China.
The last driver to fail to start two consecutive races? Bruce McLaren back in 1969 in the US and Mexico. So Piastri is in good company, although he was likely relieved to avoid the hat-trick when he managed to not just start the race in Japan, but lead on the opening lap for good measure.
Lando Norris did not start in China either – the last time McLaren did not get either car to the lights was Indianapolis in 2005. And speaking of that race, when four cars failed to start in Shanghai, that was the most since 16 cars did not start in Indianapolis.
Verstappen’s slow start
Moving onto four-time World Champion Max Verstappen, and his opening three results appear unfamiliar considering his success in recent years: sixth in Australia, a DNF in China and eighth in Japan.
This is the worst start he has had to a season as a Red Bull driver since 2022, when he failed to finish two of the first three races with reliability issues – but he did at least win the other in a competitive car that carried him to the championship that season.
It is the first time since 2018 that the Dutchman has not finished on the podium in one of the first three rounds, and he is ninth in the Drivers’ Championship, below Ollie Bearman and Pierre Gasly.
Speaking of Gasly, the Frenchman has scored in the first three Grands Prix of a season for the first time, finishing 10th, sixth and seventh. Contrast that to his season at Red Bull, when he finished 11th, eighth and sixth in his first three races.
.webp?ssl=1 "Lewis Hamilton on his all-important Ferrari podium and getting his mojo back in 2026")
