When three teams have close points, of course one team will be out of the race for a while. Real Madrid is currently in third place, but we know that they have a large rotation team and will be one of the candidates for the lead again. In fact, I think I would be very excited to see three teams competing for the championship by the end of the year. I hope it continues like this until the end of the year.
IMO, not only 3 teams but 4 teams in the top 4 positions can become candidates to get the title this season. We see the difference in points from Bilbao and Barcelona only 9 points and that could have happened. But logically it would not be possible Barcelona and Madrid must be defeated by Bilbao who in my opinion the performance is not so good.
The most important thing right now is to focus on Barcelona and Madrid. Because I have a strong feeling that only these two teams will win the title at the end of the season.