Kimi Antonelli put in a champion’s drive to win the F1 Italian Grand Prix after starting 19th and slicing his way through the field to take a stranglehold on the 2026 world championship.
The young Italian lined up near the back, on hard tires, after an engine change but simply put the bit between his teeth and gained place after place before fittingly taking the lead at the Ascari chicane with three laps to go and sprinting to the finish.
“Unbelievable,” said the Mercedes driver, who became the first Italian to win an F1 race at Monza since Ludovico Scarfiotti took the checkered flag for Ferrari in 1966. “I could never have imagined that I’d be here today, but we managed to pull it off and I’m really really happy.”
Antonelli started strong, gaining seven spots before a red flag stopped the action on Lap 2 to repair a barrier damaged by a heavy accident involving Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc. He swapped to medium tires for the restart and it took him only six laps to go from 12th to the lead, passing teammate George Russell in the first turn on Lap 18.
The Mercedes pair swapped places a few times before the team told them to stop fighting among themselves and focus on pulling a gap to third-place driver Max Verstappen of Red Bull Racing.
A virtual safety car on Lap 28, to clear Lance Stroll’s stricken Aston Martin, allowed Antonelli to pit for fresh medium tires and emerge seventh, trying to snatch victory from teammate Russell, who stayed out on old hard tires.
The win almost never came as Antonelli went off track and into the gravel trap at Turn 1 on Lap 49 while trying to get past Russell, but he gathered himself up and put his head down to get the pass done two laps later.
“It was quite scary because the tarmac was breaking up but I still thought I could make the corner but when I went over a bit of gravel I went straight” he said. “I was like maybe I lost my chance but luckily we still had the pace and I managed to bring it home.”
In the end, Antonelli finished the 53-lap race 3.857 seconds ahead of Russell, with Verstappen third, 14.718 seconds back. The McLaren pair of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri took fourth and fifth, respectively, to round out the top-five.
A seventh-career F1 win gave Antonelli 267 world championship points and a 66-marker lead over Russell with 10 races to go. Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton lies third, with 191.
In the constructors’ championship, Mercedes extended its lead to 122 points over Ferrari, 468-346, with McLaren third on 287.
Although Russell congratulated his teammate, he also seemed to regret the decision to try to make it to the end on old hard tires as his teammate clearly reaped the benefits of fresher rubber.
“Early in the race, I looked at the leaderboard and he [Antonelli] was already P4 or P5 and I knew he was going to be in the mix,” said Russell. “It looked like it was going to be a pretty strong race for us but then I was just struggling with tires at the end – obviously we did the whole race on that one hard tire. I’ll take it and it’s more positive than it was pre-summer break and that’s what I needed to try to achieve, but of course I would have loved to be P1 today.”
For his part, Verstappen also managed to overcome a late off-track excursion to score a podium while driving a car that wasn’t as helpful as it could’ve been. The four-time world champion complained about power deployment not working well early in the lap.
“Top speed wasn’t our friend today and I just tried to hang in there but they [the Mercedes pair] were a bit too fast,” he said. “I’m happy to be P3 and be on the podium.”
Aston Martin experienced another race to forget, with both cars retiring early, Fernando Alonso with damage from hitting a curb and Stroll from a mechanical problem.
“We had to retire the car with a suspected hydraulic issue, but we were struggling in the race anyway,” said Stroll. “We know we don’t have the power we need at the moment and today was further proof of that. On paper, Madrid looks slightly better for us so the focus shifts to that now.”
After 13 races, only Alonso scored any points for the team, with three. A ninth-place for Alonso in the Dutch Grand Prix represents the team’s best finish so far.
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