Kimi Antonelli took advantage of a well-timed safety car to overcome a poor start and cruise to a Japanese Grand Prix win, becoming the first teenager ever to lead the Formula One driver points.
The 19-year-old Mercedes driver started on pole but found himself sixth at the first turn after getting away slowly and needed a bit of luck to score his second consecutive win. The good fortune came on Lap 20 when Haas’ Oliver Bearman crashed heavily at the Spoon Curve and brought out the safety car right after Antonelli inherited the lead due to the cars ahead of him pitting for tires.
Antonelli immediately dived into the pitlane, swapped his medium Pirelli tires for hard compounds, emerged in the lead and never looked back.
“I think, obviously, we were very lucky with the safety car but, on the medium, we were really strong once I got some free air and then, on the hard, the pace was just incredible,” said Antonelli. “I don’t know what would have happened – how the outcome would have been – without the safety car, but it definitely made my life a lot easier.”
As for the poor start, Antonelli took full responsibility for the slow getaway.
“I ‘effed’ it up pretty badly, but I just need to keep working on that area,” he said. “I think I dropped the clutch a bit too deep, deeper than what I should have, and obviously the tires were also a bit colder, so obviously I went beyond the grip that was available and just lost a lot of places.”
Antonelli crossed the line 13.722 seconds ahead of McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc third, 15.270 seconds behind the Mercedes. Mercedes driver George Russell and McLaren’s Lando Norris rounded out the top-five.
In addition to replacing seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton as the youngest points leader in F1 history, Antonelli also became the first Italian to win consecutive races since the legendary Alberto Ascari won the Dutch and Belgian Grands Prix on his way to the 1953 world championship. Although Italian-born Mario Andretti won consecutive races for Lotus in his 1978 championship year, he raced as an American.
The young Italian leads the drivers standings with 72 points, followed by teammate Russell at 63 and Leclerc at 49. After wining all three races so far, Mercedes leads the constructors’ standings with 135 points followed by Ferrari with 90 and McLaren at 46.
The accident that brought out the safety car also drew concern from the drivers, as Bearman crashed after coming up behind a slow Franco Colapinto in an Alpine and needing to take avoiding action that saw him end up going onto the grass and spinning into the barriers.
“There was a massive overspeed – around 50 km/h – which is a part of these new regulations, and we have to get used to it, but also I felt like I wasn’t given much space, given the huge excess speed I was carrying,” Bearman said about the incident, which did not draw any sanctions from the race stewards. “We need to be a bit more prepared as, unfortunately, this was the result of a massive delta speed which we’ve not seen before in F1.”
Piastri said that the drivers frequently discussed the potential for high closing speed accidents after the sport decided on the new 50-50 split between internal combustion and battery power. As a result, the cars slow dramatically when they charge the battery at full throttle in a process called “super clipping” that saw cars slow as much as 50 km/h from their expected speed at Suzuka.
“It’s what we’re stuck with, the power units, and there’s no easy way of getting around it,” said Piastri. “From what I saw, there was no flashing light [indicating battery charging] from Colapinto, so I don’t even think he was super clipping, which is obviously a bit of a concern. Where the accident happened is not a place where you expect someone to come from so far behind and have such a big speed difference.
“I think we understand as a sport there’s a lot of things we need to tweak, a lot of things we need to change, and especially on safety grounds, yes, there’s some things that need to be looked into pretty quickly.”
In the race, the fast-starting Piastri went from third on the grid to first and looked to be the driver to beat until the safety car threw the race into Antonelli’s lap. The young Australian, who quipped that a great improvement for him in 2026 would be actually starting a Grand Prix, smiled about a podium finish.
“I think this weekend was probably one of my best weekends in F1,” said Piastri, who crashed going to the grid in the season opener in Australia and did not start the second race in China due to an electrical issue. “I felt like I hit the ground running in practice … I felt like I drove well in qualifying. In the race, there wasn’t anything more we could have done. Obviously, the safety car was a shame, but I think as race weekends go we couldn’t have done any better than that.
“Clearly the start of the season has not been easy for us with reliability, so we’ve got a long way to go, but I think we showed that if we get everything as good as we can get it, then we can cause a few headaches.”
Leclerc worked hard to score his second podium of the season, keeping Russell behind in a quicker car with some shrewd strategy, while trying to take the fight to Piastri ahead. Like Antonelli, the safety car timing also played a key role in his race outcome.
“Unfortunately, a little bit unlucky for us because of the safety car at the wrong moment. I don’t think it would have changed our race significantly, but it made it a little bit more difficult for our second stint for sure,” said Leclerc, who battled with teammate Lewis Hamilton to extend his points advantage from one to eight over the second Ferrari driver. “From that moment onward, I knew I was a little bit on the back foot, especially compared to Kimi and Lewis, but then I was like ‘Okay, let’s keep pushing, let’s try to keep those tires and bring them to the end.’ And actually, it wasn’t as much of a disadvantage as I thought – just not quite enough to get Oscar.”
As for the Canadian team, Aston Martin, Fernando Alonso ended the day 18th, while Canadian Lance Stroll retired on Lap 30 due to a water pressure problem. While still a disappointing result, the team did find a huge positive in Alonso getting a car to the finish for the first time in 2026.
“The objective today was to complete a race distance, which we achieved with Fernando in P18. That is a significant moment for the team and our technical partner, Honda, at their home race,” said Aston Martin chief trackside officer Mike Krack. “It’s also clear the performance level of our package is far from where it needs to be and we must work hard to deliver improvements.”
F1 now breaks for five weeks until the May 3 Miami Grand Prix after the series cancelled its next two races in April – Bahrain and Saudi Arabia – due to the ongoing hostilities in the Persian Gulf.
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