Antonelli won and he's still not champion.

Kimi Antonelli has done it again. He took the win in Austin, a massive thirteen second gap between him and second place, Leclerc, and walked away from Circuit of The Americas still not a world champion.

Antonelli has now won nine races this season, and holds a 123 point lead. At this point he only needs 2 points to guarantee he wins the championship.

Hamilton finished P4 and Russell finished P8, and between them they scored just enough to keep the champions alive for one more week.

So the title goes to Mexico City.

Antonelli sits on 365 points. Russell is second on 242. Hamilton is third on 241. Five races remain, which is 125 points still on the table and no sprints left to complicate it.

Here is what that means next Sunday.

Antonelli is champion in Mexico City unless Russell or Hamilton wins the race and Antonelli finishes P9 or lower. That is the whole scenario. Anything else and it’s over.

To put that in plain terms: a 20 year old in his second season can clinch the drivers' title by finishing eighth.

Mercedes won this race on strategy. They called the one-stop early, committed to it, and Antonelli had the pace to make it stick. Norris did the same thing from further back and turned it into P5.

The more interesting call came from the other garage.

Red Bull ordered Isack Hadjar to let Verstappen through so Max could chase the win. Hadjar tried to make his case before his race engineer quickly shut him down. Ultimately he complied and Verstappen took P3, Hadjar finished P6.

Hadjar’s pacing was good, but I’d say they made the right call with Hamilton finishing P4, 1.0 seconds behind Verstappen.

Mercedes won the strategy fight by not reacting. Red Bull pitted Verstappen early, at the end of lap 13, and put him on fresh softs. Mercedes left Antonelli out on his mediums until the end of lap 24, put him on hards, and ran them all the way to the flag.

Quick explainer if you're newer to this: the undercut is when a driver pits first and uses the grip of fresh tires to gain time on the car ahead before that car stops. It worked for Verstappen, but only for a few laps. He had to stop again on lap 31, and on lap 33 Antonelli passed Leclerc for the lead on tires he never had to change.

Best call: Ferrari. Both cars ran soft, medium, hard, and their second stops put them on fresh hards for the closing laps. Leclerc went from P4 to P2, passing Norris and Verstappen inside the last ten laps. Hamilton went from P5 to P4.

Worst timing: Hamilton and the lap 52 VSC. Bottas parked his Cadillac with an engine problem, the virtual safety car froze the field, and Hamilton's chase of Verstappen ended 1.0 seconds short. Third pays 15 points and fourth pays 12. Those three points would have put Hamilton second in the championship instead of third.

Here is the part of this weekend almost nobody covered.

Texas has paid more than $300 million since 2012 to help cover Formula 1's sanctioning fee for the Austin race (Reported, AP). It runs through the state's Major Events Reimbursement Program, which lets COTA apply annually for public money to offset the cost of staging the event.

Their justification is economic impact. F1 says the race has generated roughly $7 billion for Austin and Texas across its first decade, with the 2023 edition alone producing more than $1 billion in direct and indirect spending and about $38 million in state tax receipts (Reported, Formula 1).

Those are big numbers.

The financial impact analysis COTA submits is produced by AngelouEconomics, a local firm that works with COTA. The analysis exists in part to support the reimbursement application (Reported, Austin Business Journal). Their figure for a recent race was around $980 million in total impact, of which $434 million was direct spending (Estimated, AngelouEconomics).

Austin hotels genuinely fill up. The race draws over 400,000 people across the weekend (Reported, COTA). But the party that benefits from the reimbursement is also the party commissioning the study that justifies it.

It matters more now, not less. F1 extended the Austin contract through 2034 (Confirmed, Formula 1). That is eight more years of the same arrangement.

Public money going to events that draw tourism is normal and often defensible. What bothers me is that the number everyone quotes comes from a study the beneficiary paid for, and it gets repeated in press releases as though it were audited. If the race is worth $300 million of Texas money, and it might be, that case should be made by somebody with nothing riding on the answer.

Mexico City, November 1. Antonelli needs eighth place. Russell and Hamilton need a win and a miracle.

It would make Antonelli the youngest champion in the history of the sport, and it would do it in a season where Mercedes has been so far ahead in the constructors' standings that the drivers' fight was effectively decided inside one garage.

Hit reply and tell me: does a title won by this margin, in a car this dominant, tell you anything real about how good Antonelli actually is? Or do we not find out until somebody puts him in a car that isn't the fastest on the grid?

For me, it’s clear. Antonelli is something special this sport needed.

Jacob

United States Grand Prix, Circuit of The Americas, Round 18. P1 Antonelli, P2 Leclerc (+13.0s), P3 Verstappen, P4 Hamilton, P5 Norris, P6 Hadjar, P7 Piastri, P8 Russell, P9 Lawson, P10 Gasly. Retirement: Colapinto (lap 38). Perez finished P19 for Cadillac. Late virtual safety car. Championship after 18 rounds: Antonelli 365, Russell 242, Hamilton 241. Next up: Mexico City Grand Prix, November 1.