Antonelli wins Italian Grand Prix from 19th on the grid

Kimi Antonelli won the Italian Grand Prix from 19th on the grid, beating team mate George Russell in a straight fight at Monza and becoming the first Italian to win his home race since Ludovico Scarfiotti in 1966. It is his seventh victory of the season and it extends his lead in the drivers’ championship.

Mercedes had fitted a complete new power unit to his car over the weekend, which cost him a back of the grid start despite qualifying seventh. Fifty three laps later he crossed the line first, 3.857 seconds clear of Russell, with Max Verstappen third.

Leclerc crash brings out the red flag on lap two

The race barely got going. On the second lap Charles Leclerc was fighting Oscar Piastri when he lost the Ferrari in a quick corner and hit the barrier hard. He climbed out but sat on the ground for some time with the medical team before walking away. The impact was heavy enough for the race to be stopped, and it left the tifosi with nothing to cheer after Lewis Hamilton had already dropped back following contact at the start.

The restart was a standing start and it needed two attempts. Yuki Tsunoda was not correctly placed in his grid box, the start was aborted and the field went round again.

Antonelli climbs from sixth to the lead after the restart

When the race finally went green properly, Verstappen lost out to Franco Colapinto and took the place straight back around the outside of the chicane. Hamilton passed Pierre Gasly for third, and then the Mercedes number 12 started moving.

Gasly went first, then Hamilton, then Piastri. Within a handful of laps Antonelli was in the leading group, and from there the lead of the Italian Grand Prix changed hands over and over between him, Russell and Verstappen. Monza’s slipstream made every straight a lottery, and the three of them spent lap after lap trading places until the pit wall intervened.

Mercedes tell both drivers to keep it clean

The team could see what the fighting was costing. Every swap between the two silver cars let Verstappen close back up, and the message went out to cool it. Antonelli was warned twice, the second time with the reasoning spelled out, and he did not appear to be listening.

Verstappen was fighting his own battle. He complained on the radio about the rear of the Red Bull and how difficult it was to drive, the same problem he had reported all weekend, and it explained why he could not stay with the Mercedes pair once they got past.

Virtual safety car splits the strategies

Aston Martin’s afternoon ended in the space of a few minutes. Fernando Alonso parked in the pit lane, and shortly afterwards Lance Stroll stopped out on the circuit, which brought out the virtual safety car.

Antonelli and Verstappen both took the cheap stop. Russell stayed out and inherited the lead with his stop still to come. Antonelli rejoined sixth and Verstappen seventh, and the race turned into a question of whether fresh tyres could beat track position.

They could. Antonelli picked off Norris, Hamilton and Piastri in quick succession and set about his team mate, who by then was reporting vibrations from his tyres. The gap came down from five seconds to under two. Antonelli ran through the gravel in one attempt and kept the car going, then made the move stick in the closing laps.

Norris and Piastri fight over fourth

Behind the leaders the McLaren drivers had a scrap of their own that went off the track and back on again. Piastri was told to keep it clean by his own pit wall after almost putting Norris into the run off. Norris took fourth by two tenths at the flag, with Hamilton sixth and Gasly seventh after starting from pole.

The full classification is on our Italian Grand Prix 2026 results page. Three cars failed to finish. Leclerc was out on lap two, and both Aston Martins retired in the second half of the race.

First Italian winner at Monza in sixty years

Scarfiotti’s win for Ferrari in 1966 was the last time an Italian driver stood on the top step at Monza. Sixty years and one comeback drive later, a 20 year old from Bologna has done it in a Mercedes, having started 19th.