F1 2026 next four races: which rounds eliminate Lawson, Hadjar, Piastri and Verstappen

Baku on September 26 is the first of four rounds that take points off the table, and two names go with it. There are 233 points left, nine wins at 25 and one sprint win at 8, and Baku removes 25 of them. Liam Lawson is 233 points behind Andrea Kimi Antonelli, which is the entire pool, so his ceiling is 292 and Antonelli already has 292. Nine wins and the last sprint win get him a tie, not a title. Isack Hadjar is 221 back and is the other name on the Azerbaijan line. Pierre Gasly at 251 is already gone, and the line that removed him moves toward the front of the grid every time a race finishes.

Every number here comes from the standings as of the September 20 update. The championship is complete through round 14, the Spanish Grand Prix of September 13, and no race has been run since. Nine races and one sprint remain, rounds 15 through 23. None of this is a projection and none of it is a probability.

A driver's maximum is his current total plus everything still available, and that pool only goes down. Baku leaves 208. The round on October 4 leaves 183. Marina Bay, which carries the sprint, takes 33 rather than 25 and leaves 150. Austin leaves 125. A driver is finished the moment his deficit is larger than what is left, so those four figures are a descending set of cut lines, and the only question worth asking about each round is whose deficit it passes.

Baku City Circuit, September 26 at 11:00 UTC, leaves 208. Two deficits are on the wrong side of it. Lawson at 233 has to take 25 points out of Antonelli in a single weekend, and at a round with no sprint a 25 point swing means one thing only: he wins the race and Antonelli scores nothing at all. Hadjar at 221 needs 13. It is a smaller demand and it still has to happen in one afternoon. Neither man is racing for a championship in Azerbaijan. They are racing for the right to still have a number on October 4.

The round on October 4 is the only one of the four that adds no new name. It leaves 183, and the nearest deficit below Hadjar's is Oscar Piastri's 172, which stays inside that line by 11 points with Piastri doing nothing at all. One note on this round. Our English feed files it under a name that does not match where it is run, so we refer to it by its date and its circuit: 07:00 UTC on October 4 at Sepang International Circuit, Kuala Lumpur. It is a standard 25 point round with no sprint.

Marina Bay Street Circuit on October 11 at 12:00 UTC is the last sprint weekend of the season, and it is the only one of these four rounds that removes 33 points rather than 25. That 8 point difference does more work than it looks. Without the sprint the pool today would be 225 rather than 233, and Lawson at 233 back would already be eliminated alongside Gasly. The single remaining sprint is the only reason he still has a number at all. After Marina Bay the pool is 150, and Piastri's 172 is on the wrong side of it. He has three rounds to take 22 points out of Antonelli, or his title arithmetic ends on a Sunday in Singapore.

Austin on October 25 at 20:00 UTC leaves 125, and two drivers meet that figure from opposite sides. Max Verstappen is 147 back, which stays inside the Singapore line by three points and fails the Austin one by 22. He has four rounds to find those 22 points. Charles Leclerc is 125 back and lands exactly on the 125 that Austin leaves, with a margin of zero, which keeps him alive rather than ending him. Every point Antonelli takes out of him before that Sunday is over puts him under the line. Above Leclerc nobody meets a line in these four rounds. Lando Norris at 106, Lewis Hamilton at 101 and George Russell at 81 all come through Austin with room to spare.

The constructors board runs the same ladder with bigger numbers. A team can still gain 402 points, 43 at a race and 15 across the sprint, and the pool falls to 359 after Baku, 316 after the October 4 round, 258 after Marina Bay and 215 after Austin. Mercedes lead on 503. Ferrari at 145 back and McLaren at 197 back are both inside the 215 that Austin leaves without doing anything. Red Bull at 273 back come through Baku and October 4 comfortably and then run into the 258 line at Marina Bay, which puts their deadline on the same weekend as Piastri's: 15 points out of Mercedes across three rounds. Everyone below is already out, starting with RB at 426 back. The next thing to watch is a result, Lawson's own. He has to win at Baku on September 26 with Antonelli scoring nothing, and anything else takes his number away. From the other end of the same board, Antonelli needs 153 more points to be champion no matter what anybody else does.

How to read these numbers. A magic or clinch number is the minimum further wins or points that guarantee an outcome even if every rival takes everything left, which is why Antonelli's sits at 153 rather than at the gap to second. A tragic number is the reverse, the further losses after which an outcome is impossible even if the driver wins everything left, and in a points championship it appears as the moment a deficit grows past the pool. A reachable rank range is the highest and lowest final position still arithmetically available. Ties are counted in the driver's favour, which is why Lawson is still listed at a dead heat of 292, so a name we list as alive can already be finished on the official countback and our elimination can trail the official one. The live standings and every gap are at, the round by round schedule with dates and sprint flags at, and the working behind every figure at. Each driver's own answer is on his page, /f1/driver/lawson and and the rest, with the team version at (/f1/team/red_bull).