He came into the weekend insisting he was going to try to apply the “same mindset as I had all year – one race at a time”.
But on Saturday he acknowledged that this one was a new kind of weekend.
“It does feel a little bit different,” he said. “But the goal stays the same. I just need to keep doing my job. And, actually, I feel like I can enjoy more driving, everything.
“But, of course, we’re going to do the race tomorrow. We’re going to try and win. And then we’ll see what happens. Obviously, I’m in a very good position.”
Antonelli is typically accompanied by his father, Marco, at grands prix, but he said this weekend he had brought other people with him as well to help keep him in the right frame of mind.
“I have a great group of people around me,” he said. “I have a lot of friends here as well, so we enjoy the evenings together.
“We play cards in the evening, so we’re just doing the fun stuff. And that’s what helps, to just relax a little bit and just connect with the mind, and then once you go on track you are back full focus.”
The maths suggest the most likely scenario is that Antonelli will not win the title on Sunday – it would, as he put it on Thursday, require “something catastrophic to happen to the others”.
If this is a bit of an overstatement – Russell and Hamilton would need only to crash together on the first lap, for example – the fundamental truth is real.