Kimi Antonelli's Monza Miracle Shocks Ferrari
The old place has seen some things. Yet even by Monza’s standards, this was a Sunday to shake the grandstands.
From 19th on the grid to the top step of the podium, Kimi Antonelli ripped up the script at his home Grand Prix, turned a weekend of “damage limitation” into a career-defining statement, and tightened his grip on the 2026 world championship. While he soared, Ferrari stumbled through a bruising afternoon in front of their own people, their title ambitions jolted by Lap 1 chaos and hard truths.
Antonelli from 19th to glory
This was not meant to be his race. A raft of power unit changes dumped Antonelli 30 places down the order, leaving him marooned on the back rows in a Mercedes that had the pace but, on paper, not the track position.
He treated that as a challenge.
When the lights went out, Antonelli went hunting. Within a couple of laps he was already 12th, slicing past midfield traffic with the kind of conviction that turns a partisan crowd into a roar. Then came the first big twist: Charles Leclerc’s heavy crash and the red flag that followed.
The stoppage reset the field but not Antonelli’s intent. On the restart he picked up where he left off, elbowing his way into the points and, crucially, into clear air. The Mercedes was flying, and the Italian was relentless.
By Lap 18, he had hunted down his team mate. George Russell, who had started at the sharp end, suddenly found the car that began the day in 19th filling his mirrors. Antonelli launched his first move for the lead, a sign that this was not going to be a polite intra-team spar. It was a straight fight for control of the race – and, in many ways, for control of the season.
The pressure only intensified when a mid-race Virtual Safety Car split their strategies. Antonelli dived in for fresh medium tyres; Russell stayed out on used hards, banking on track position and tyre life. It looked like the moment that might swing things back towards the Briton.
It didn’t. The home favourite’s raw pace shredded the theory.
Lap after lap, Antonelli reeled Russell in, the advantage of younger rubber combining with a confidence that bordered on ruthless. Mercedes boss Toto Wolff later summed it up bluntly: “Nothing would have stopped him.” The evidence on track backed that up.
When the chequered flag finally fell, Antonelli had turned a back-row start into a Monza masterpiece. The win stretched his lead over Russell to 66 points in the standings – just nine shy of the cushion equivalent to three race victories. With that kind of margin, the title picture looks brutally clear. If Russell is going to stop the 19-year-old from storming to the 2026 crown, his response has to start now.
Ferrari’s homecoming unravels in a lap
While one Italian poster boy lit up Monza, Ferrari’s day never got off the ground.
They had arrived with optimism and upgrades. A new engine, a sea of red in the grandstands, and public belief. Lewis Hamilton spoke on Thursday of “strongly” believing in Ferrari’s chances of victory. Leclerc talked about chasing “a very special weekend”. On paper, this was set up as a redemption story.
Qualifying hinted that the script might be more complicated. Strategy mis-steps left both drivers frustrated, with Hamilton and Leclerc feeling more had been left on the table. Even so, fourth and fifth became third and fourth on the grid after Oscar Piastri’s penalty. The opportunity was still there.
Then the race started.
Into the second corner on Lap 1, Hamilton and Leclerc went side by side, two Ferraris fighting for the same scrap of tarmac. Neither yielded. Hamilton was forced wide into the gravel, his momentum shredded as the field streamed past. “Charles pushed me off!” came the immediate radio message from the seven-time World Champion, his tone telling its own story.
He rejoined deep in the pack, his race plan in pieces before it had even formed.
One lap later, Ferrari’s afternoon got worse. Leclerc, trying to rebuild his own charge, lost control of the SF-26 and slammed into the barriers. The crash brought out the red flag and silenced a grandstand that had been ready to erupt for him. Afterward, the Monegasque explained that he had “had to go back off and on throttle” on the opening tour and would have to “look into” what triggered the loss of control. The damage, though, was already done.
Hamilton battled back, but sixth at the flag was a poor return on a weekend that had begun with talk of victory. He called the race “a bit devastating” and “tough to swallow”, especially after that first-lap clash that left him, in his own words, “P10 or something” in the early running. The promise of Ferrari’s upgrade faded into the Monza heat haze, replaced by questions about execution and opportunity lost.
Gasly’s pole stuns the paddock
If Antonelli owned Sunday, Pierre Gasly owned Saturday.
Monza’s long straights and slipstream games always threaten chaos in qualifying, but nobody had Alpine and Gasly down for outright pole. Nobody, that is, except the man in the cockpit and the team that rolled out a car trimmed to perfection.
Gasly was electric from the start of qualifying, using the Mercedes power unit in the back of the Alpine to top Q1 and then, when it really mattered, Q3. His first Formula 1 pole came at the same circuit where he claimed his first – and still only – Grand Prix win six years earlier. This was no fluke, no lucky tow at the right moment. It was controlled, repeatable speed.
“I’m so happy. It’s been nine years [in F1] trying to chase and get the opportunity to take pole position,” he said afterwards, the emotion clear. Monza, once again, had given him a career milestone. “I won my first race in Monza, and to get my first pole position on this track… I think is something special around here.”
Holding off the heavyweight teams for 53 laps was always going to be a different challenge. Gasly led the opening lap and stayed in the mix among the frontrunners, but Alpine simply did not have the race pace to match Mercedes and the other big guns over a full stint. As the strategies unfolded and the tyres wore, he inevitably slipped backwards.
Seventh at the flag, 27 seconds behind Antonelli, might look underwhelming on paper after starting first. In context, it was a strong, disciplined drive – comfortably clear of the chasing midfield and backed up by a valuable team result.
Franco Colapinto added to Alpine’s haul with ninth place. The rookie had run as high as third after the restart, only to lose ground when he ran off at Lesmo 1. He regrouped, attacked again and clawed his way past Yuki Tsunoda’s Racing Bulls in the closing laps, falling just short of catching Arvid Lindblad in the second Racing Bulls car in eighth.
Those points matter. Alpine’s double-score has dragged them closer to the Red Bull sister team in the fight for fifth in the constructors’ standings, trimming the gap to 13 points and giving the French outfit something tangible to chase over the remaining rounds.
Junior stars light up Monza
Away from the main event, the next generation made their own noise.
In Formula 2, Joshua Duerksen produced a perfect weekend for Invicta Racing. He won the Sprint. He won the Feature. He led home team mate Rafael Camara in Sunday’s main race, with Campos Racing’s Noel Leon completing the podium. Two wins at Monza lifted Duerksen to eighth in the championship and, just as notably, moved him into the record books with a record-equalling eight F2 victories.
Camara’s podium finish tightened the chase to championship leader Nikola Tsolov, turning the F2 title battle into another storyline to watch as the season heads into its final phase.
Monza has a habit of pointing towards the future. On this evidence, it just delivered a glimpse of both the sport’s present and its next wave – and raised a blunt question for the rest of the field: who, exactly, is going to stop Kimi Antonelli now?
