Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli needed to work for it, but in the end, the championship leader took his sixth win in 10 races to take a stranglehold on the 2026 F1 championship.
While Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc made a game of it, the young Italian showed nerves of steel as he recovered from a virtual safety car wildcard thrown at him to score an impressive come-from-behind win.
“It was a hard-fought race – we lost the first place with the virtual safety car but then we managed to make our way back. It was a tough win because Charles was quick,” said Antonelli. “Today we were a bit lucky in terms of what happened with the championship, but that’s why you have to take every opportunity – we’ve seen it can really swing very easily. We just got to keep performing and bringing the results and then we will see what happens at the end of the year.”
The 25 points for the win gave Antonelli 204 and a 45-point cushion on Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton, with George Russell of Mercedes third on 154. In the constructors standings, Mercedes leads with 358 followed by Ferrari at 285 and McLaren with 195.
Although he briefly lost the lead on the opening lap to Max Verstappen, Antonelli controlled the race from the front until he pitted on Lap 19 and emerged fifth. A virtual safety car on Lap 21, for debris on the track, helped Leclerc to pit and emerge ahead of the Mercedes driver.
Antonelli went to work and slowly clawed back the gap to Leclerc, catching him on Lap 33 and making the pass on the long Kemmel straight a lap later. From there, he held off Leclerc to score a 1.952-second win.
Leclerc raced for most of the afternoon with damage from contact with McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and still almost came out the winner.
“I believed in the win until the end. We had a little bit of luck, obviously, with the virtual safety car at the right time for us, but the pace was relatively strong,” said Leclerc. “I’m confident in saying that I made a step forward. Whether I’m at the level where I want to perform, not yet. There are still things in the car that I need to drive around – I cannot drive completely naturally, and that is slowing me down in some parts of the race, so there are still things that I’ve got to work on in order to be better.”
Meanwhile, Verstappen ran a pretty lonely race to third after looking quick at the start, but pitting early for tires meant that he lost time – and a potential second-place finish – to Leclerc, who dived into pitlane under the virtual safety car after the Red Bull driver stopped.
“I tried everything I could in the race. The first stint wasn’t so bad, but the second stint was probably a bit more difficult, but at the same also I think Kimi and I got a little bit unlucky with the virtual safety car,” said Verstappen. “I think for us to be on the podium is pretty good. I gave it everything I had and I think P3 is good.”
The race turned out to be a disaster for Antonelli’s teammate Russell, who made contact with Hamilton while trying to go around the outside of the Ferrari at Les Combes on the opening lap. Russell spun into the gravel and retired.
With his teammate going on to win the race, Russell went from 25 points behind, in second, to 50 markers back and down to third, five points behind Hamilton in the driver standings.
“I though it was a racing incident, I’m not going to blame Lewis,” said Russell. “It’s one thing after another after another after another. Not good enough on all regards. I’ll try and reset and we’ll see what we can do.”
The contact delivered a five-second penalty to Hamilton, which cost him a chance at a podium. To make matters worse, Hamilton also left his pit box too quickly when he stopped to serve the penalty and hit one of his crew members. The team also missed making a front wing adjustment, which gave his car understeer with the hard tires. He crossed the line fourth after passing Piastri with four laps to go.
Hamilton escaped a time penalty for the unsafe release, but the team got slapped with a €30,000 fine. The fine gets dropped by €10,000 if no similar incident occurs in the next year. Ferrari also must submit a report to the sport’s governing body withing two weeks to demonstrate that it worked to reduce the risk of such an incident occurring in the future.
Canadian Lance Stroll spent most of the race near the back in his Aston Martin until he retired on Lap 30. His teammate Fernando Alonso finished as the last of the runners in 19th place.
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