Antonelli between cabal and superstition: with three victories in the first 4 GPs he almost always wins the title. But there are four illustrious exceptions

84% of titles won The obligatory premise of this article is that it may not be appreciated by Toto Wolff and in general by fans who are too superstitious or who are not big fans of statistics. With his third consecutive success this year, obtained in the Miami GP and which took him to three victories in 2026 out of four rounds disputed, Andrea Kimi Antonelli sent a very strong signal to the entire championship and to his teammate George Russell: despite his 19 years of age, the talented Italian driver should currently be considered the favorite to win the world title. Indeed, the numbers say it: in the history of F1, 25 times a driver has achieved success in at least three of the first four GPs and in 21 of these cases he has subsequently become champion at the end of the year. This is a very high conversion percentage, 84%. The last to make it three out of four at the start of the World Championship was Max Verstappen, in 2024, and at the end of the season the Dutchman from Red Bull was able to celebrate his fourth career title after resisting Lando Norris’ comeback attempt. In short, despite still having a very long season to face, the #12 from Bologna truly has every reason to dream big. Hamilton, Senna, Prost and Fittipaldi: the illustrious pranks Be careful though, because the exceptions to this statistic are all notable: the last driver who lost a World Championship after winning three of the first four Grands Prix was Lewis Hamilton, in 2021, to the full advantage of Max Verstappen who was crowned champion in the now infamous Abu Dhabi grand final. But the other similar cases also all date back to seasons that have entered the collective memory of F1: before Hamilton’s defeat you had to go back to the end of the 80s to find two drivers beaten after a triumphant start to the season, and what drivers. In 1989 it was Ayrton Senna who won three GPs in the first four (the second, third and fourth, like Antonelli), but the World Championship was won by Alain Prost who actually achieved his first success of the season only at the fifth GP. Senna’s many retirements and the unforgettable clash at Suzuka pointed the championship towards the Professor. 12 months earlier the opposite had happened: Prost had won three out of four races at the start but at the end of the World Championship it was Senna who celebrated, also thanks to the discard rule which allowed him to beat his teammate-rival despite having collected fewer points overall. However, the progenitor of the defeats that occurred after a brilliant first phase of the season was Emerson Fittipaldi, who lost the 1973 World Championship to Jackie Stewart despite three victories in the first four GPs. Those three successes in fact remained Fittipaldi’s only ones for the whole year while the Scottish champion – winner of the third round in South Africa – then won four more times during that year. Once upon a time, with championships of 16 or 17 GPs, winning at least three races out of the first four was more relevant in counting points, but it should also be remembered that up until 25-30 years ago the reliability of single-seaters was much more precarious than today and that even the fastest car could run into several consecutive ‘zeros’, a much less frequent circumstance in contemporary F1. Kimi, in any case, is authorized to make all the spells he knows.

Automobile Magazine – F1 English News
2026-05-08 02:05:00