Charles
Leclerc

Leclerc's 2026 turned at Silverstone and held its line at Spa. Blistering on Saturdays all year and too often denied on Sundays, by misfortune one week and race pace the next, he finally converted at Silverstone: leading from P2 on the grid to the flag for his first win of the season, the SF-26's second of the era. Belgium was the follow-up, a P2 built on a well-timed VSC stop from P5 on the grid, running the champion-elect to 1.952s before Antonelli's straight-line speed retook the lead at Les Combes. Podiums in Melbourne and Suzuka had bookended a spring of top-five accumulation; the summer has given the campaign real Sunday weight.

Those results reframe the table without erasing it. He sits on 138 points in fourth place, 31 behind Hamilton with eleven rounds to run, but the single-lap edge is his (he out-qualified Hamilton again at Spa, P5 to P6) and the intra-team qualifying count has tipped his way. The old wound remains, two scoreless Sundays at Monaco and Barcelona that cost more than any single result can repay, yet the arc still points up: at a power track that should have hurt him, he was the closest thing to a threat the winner had.