Kimi Antonelli won Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix, crossing the line at Monza just under four seconds clear of his Mercedes team mate George Russell, with Max Verstappen completing the podium for Red Bull some fourteen and a half seconds further back.
On paper that reads like a routine result for the man who already leads this year’s championship. On track it was anything but routine: Antonelli started nineteenth, and by the chequered flag he had gone through the entire field.
Strictly speaking, this was not a first win for the twenty-year-old from Bologna, who has already stood on the top step half a dozen times this season and arrived at Monza well clear at the top of the standings.
Sunday stood out instead for the manner of it, and for the history now attached to his name: no Italian driver had won his home Grand Prix since Ludovico Scarfiotti in 1966.
Russell drove a controlled, largely mistake-free race from second on the grid, and held the lead for a long stretch through the middle of the afternoon. His misfortune was he just happened to share a garage with a team mate enjoying the best weekend of his career.
Antonelli’s afternoon was complicated. A thirty-place grid penalty for exceeding his quota of power unit parts dropped him from what had actually been the seventh-fastest time in qualifying down to the back two rows. He made up half the field within the opening laps, helped along by a first-lap collision between the two Ferraris and by a red flag that bunched the whole grid together for a standing restart. From there it turned into a duel with Russell lasting the best part of thirty laps, the two Mercedes drivers trading places at Monza’s two chicanes with the ease of team mates who came up through the junior categories together. A pit stop, for fresh medium tyres under a Virtual Safety Car, finally gave Antonelli the pace advantage he needed.
Verstappen was, once again, the closest thing to a spoiler. He spent the early laps trading the lead itself with Russell, before a mechanical complaint over team radio took the edge off his charge. Third place extends Red Bull’s run of podium finishes this season, though the gap to both Mercedes drivers, and now to Ferrari in the constructors’ standings, tells its own story: Red Bull remain fast in bursts rather than fast for an entire race distance.
For the home crowd who fill Monza every September, the day brought little comfort. Charles Leclerc squeezed Lewis Hamilton wide at the first chicane on the opening lap, sending his own team mate down the order, then crashed heavily into the barriers at the Parabolica a lap later after catching a drainage grille mid corner. He climbed out unhurt, though visibly shaken, and sat with his head in his hands beside the wreckage for several minutes. Hamilton recovered to finish sixth, Ferrari’s best result of the weekend and, by his own admission afterwards, nowhere near good enough on a Sunday billed in advance as decisive for the team’s much discussed new engine upgrade. It has not been the season either Ferrari driver hoped for, and Monza only sharpened that feeling.
Further down the order, Audi’s first season as a full works team remained a quiet struggle: Gabriel Bortoleto and Nico Hulkenberg finished eleventh and twelfth, just outside the points, on a weekend when the German marque badly needed something to show.
None of Sunday’s drama happens without the circuit itself. Monza is the fastest track left on the calendar: three long straights joined by a handful of chicanes, with cars running almost no wing and trading cornering grip for outright speed. That combination makes overtaking unusually easy here compared with most modern circuits, since cars can draft one another down the straights and out brake rivals into the chicanes without the turbulent air that ruins overtaking elsewhere. A driver with a genuinely quick car, even starting from the back, has a real chance of carving through the field in a way that would be nearly impossible at a tighter venue. Add a red flag that reset the whole grid onto the same strategy, and Antonelli’s comeback becomes explicable rather than miraculous, even if it never stopped feeling like the latter from the grandstands.
What comes next will look rather different. Formula One moves straight on to Madrid this coming weekend, to a brand-new circuit called Madring that mixes public roads with permanent sections and, crucially, demands far more downforce than Monza ever does. Mercedes arrives as favourites again, though Russell may hope for a calmer fight with his team mate than the one Monza produced. Red Bull will be banking on a higher downforce track suiting Verstappen’s car better than a straight-line speed contest ever could. Ferrari need answers, and soon: their new engine upgrade did not deliver the step forward promised before the weekend, and with Leclerc facing a rebuild after his crash and Hamilton openly frustrated, the pressure inside Maranello will only grow before Sunday. Audi will simply be hoping for a cleaner run and a first taste of points at a track nobody has raced on before, which at least levels things out somewhat.
Race result, top 7 (Monza, 6 September 2026)
- Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes), 1:51:15.281
- George Russell (Mercedes), +3.857s
- Max Verstappen (Red Bull Racing), +14.718s
- Lando Norris (McLaren), +19.056s
- Oscar Piastri (McLaren), +19.253s
- Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari), +24.655s
- Pierre Gasly (Alpine), +27.351s
Drivers’ Championship, top 7 (after Round 13)
- Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes), 267 points
- George Russell (Mercedes), 201 points
- Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari), 191 points
- Lando Norris (McLaren), 171 points
- Charles Leclerc (Ferrari), 155 points
- Max Verstappen (Red Bull Racing), 127 points
- Oscar Piastri (McLaren), 116 points
Constructors’ Championship, top 4
- Mercedes, 468 points
- Ferrari, 346 points
- McLaren, 287 points
- Red Bull Racing, 204 points
Next race
The Spanish Grand Prix (Formula 1 TAG Heuer Gran Premio de España 2026), held for the first time at the new Madring circuit in Madrid. Sessions run from Friday 11 to Sunday 13 September 2026, with the race itself on Sunday 13 September.
Copyright per foto Ferrari:
© Ferrari S.p.A. Scuderia Ferrari HP
Copyright per foto Mercedes:
Mercedes Media – Photo Jiri Krenek – Active Pictures
