How Antonelli won the Italian GP from 19th

Kimi Antonelli started the 2026 Italian Grand Prix 19th on the grid and finished it 3.8 seconds clear of the man who had led most of the afternoon. He is the first Italian to win at Monza since Ludovico Scarfiotti did it for Ferrari in 1966, and he did not inherit the win. He took it off his own team mate with four laps to go, one lap after putting his Mercedes through the gravel attempting the same move.

A 30-place penalty put him 19th, and he was fifth within minutes

The grid slot was settled before the car turned a wheel in anger. Antonelli took a fifth internal combustion engine, a fourth control electronics unit and a fourth energy store. Three separate components beyond his allocation, three 10-place penalties, 30 places in total. He qualified seventh and lined up 19th, with only Alexander Albon and the two pit lane starters behind him.

The race then rearranged itself before the penalty could bite. Charles Leclerc crashed heavily at the Parabolica on lap two while fighting Oscar Piastri, and the race was red-flagged with George Russell leading. The restart was a standing one, and it had to be waved off once because Yuki Tsunoda was not properly lined up in his box.

When the field finally got away cleanly, Antonelli was back in the top ten and going forward fast. He passed Pierre Gasly for fifth, Lewis Hamilton for fourth and Piastri for third inside a handful of laps. He cleared Max Verstappen for second. On lap 18 of 53 he passed Russell for the lead of his home grand prix.

The lead changed hands six times because Monza hands it over

What followed was not a breakaway. Monza is the one circuit where the car in front is the car at a disadvantage, and the two Mercedes drivers spent ten laps proving it. Russell took the lead back, Antonelli took it again, Russell took it again. By our count it changed hands six times after the restart, with Verstappen in the middle of the early exchanges.

Neither driver gained anything from it. Both were burning deployment on passes the slipstream handed straight back a lap later, and every exchange cost time Verstappen was using to close. The pit wall told both cars to cool it. Antonelli, second at the time, did not look ready to settle for it.

The virtual safety car on lap 28 split the race in two

Lance Stroll stopped his Aston Martin with a hydraulic failure with 25 laps to run, and the virtual safety car that followed decided the race. Antonelli and Verstappen took the cheap stop. Russell stayed out on the hard tyre he had started on.

Toto Wolff has been open about why. “We didn’t know what was the better strategy,” he told reporters at Monza. “At that stage, the system said that the one-stop for Russell comes out ahead.” Sky Sports reported that Mercedes’ model expected Antonelli to come close but not to catch.

“The hard tyre is going to go forever,” Wolff said. “You can start on it and finish on it and you can see with George it was a forever tyre, but it didn’t have the performance that of the medium.” The hard did last. That was never the question. The question was whether lasting would be enough against a driver on fresher rubber with 25 laps to use it, and it was not.

Russell was annoyed at the timing, not at the tyre

Russell’s complaint afterwards was precise. It was not that Mercedes gave him the wrong tyre, but that the caution arrived at the one moment that turned his tyre into a liability.

“I was just a little bit annoyed with the timing of that VSC, because I think it would have been tough for those guys on the medium to have competed with anybody on the hard tyre,” he said. Without the interruption there was no cheap stop for Antonelli to take, and the race stays a straight fight between two cars on the same strategy. “It would have been very interesting to see how the race would have panned out if there was no VSC,” Russell added.

He went off at the chicane and led a lap later

Antonelli’s win was not tidy. With about five laps left he came at Russell into the first chicane, ran out of road and went through the gravel, rejoining with the front wing intact but roughly a second and a half of the gap given back. “What the f*** happened there,” came over the radio.

It cost him one lap. He was back on the gearbox next time around, and this time the move stuck. “Just keep it clean, Kimi, no risk,” his engineer told him once he was through, which tells you what the pit wall made of the attempt. He led the last four laps and took the flag 3.8 seconds clear.

Ferrari left their home race 122 points behind Mercedes

Sunday was a write-off in red. Leclerc started third, ahead of Hamilton, and the two Ferraris ran far too close together at the first chicane. “With Lewis it was way too close into Turn 1 and unfortunately in Turn 2 then I don’t know if we had contact or whatsoever,” Leclerc said. “I was quite a lot on the inside kerb and tried to make the corner which I didn’t do it tight enough.” Hamilton dropped to around tenth: “Well, I ended up like 10th or something, so there’s not really much to say about it, really.”

Two laps later Leclerc was in the barriers at the Parabolica. He pointed at how the car felt on throttle rather than at any single trigger, and slow-motion replays suggested his rear tyre caught a drain cover on the exit. He was sent for further checks after the impact. Hamilton recovered to sixth, stuck for lap after lap behind a McLaren that had its own problems all weekend.

Mercedes now lead Ferrari by 122 points in the constructors’ championship, 468 to 346.

Our view: 66 points clear with ten rounds left

Antonelli leaves Monza on 267 points to Russell’s 201, a lead that grew from 59 to 66 in an afternoon. Ten rounds remain, which is 258 points still available, so this is not over on arithmetic. It is close to over on evidence.

The thing worth keeping from Sunday is not the history, satisfying as sixty years of waiting is. It is that Mercedes split their two cars onto different strategies, backed the one their own model preferred, and the other one won anyway by four seconds. Russell did nothing wrong. He was beaten by a team mate who passed him four times in one race, one of them from the gravel.

Ferrari go to Madrid next weekend needing a result at a circuit nobody has raced on. We will be covering the Spanish Grand Prix live from first practice on our live blog, and the full Monza classification is on the Italian Grand Prix 2026 results page alongside the updated 2026 championship standings.