Kimi Antonelli achieved his ninth victory of the 2026 Formula 1 season thanks to a dominant lights to flag drive at the United States Grand Prix and yet will have to wait until Mexico to claim the drivers’ championship.
From pole, the Mercedes driver fended off a challenge from the Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen’s Red Bull as he stuck to the Silver Arrows’ masterplan with a clean one-stop race.
Antonelli’s ninth Grand Prix win of this season was not quite enough to secure the title just yet, but the 20-year-old star now looks set to become Formula 1’s youngest ever world champion at next weekend’s Mexico Grand Prix.
Antonelli held onto his lead at the start of the 56-lap race as second-placed Verstappen suffered a poor getaway. That left the Red Bull driver vulnerable to Leclerc, who had picked off Isack Hadjar and then swept past Verstappen with a high commitment overtake through the Esses.
Lewis Hamilton, starting on used softs, also worked his way past Hadjar. Behind him, George Russell was handed a five-second time penalty for gaining a track advantage on lap one while defending his position. As the top of the order settled down, Oscar Piastri was told to let quicker Lando Norris past on lap eight for seventh position.
At the front, Antonelli controlled a narrow three-second lead on Verstappen. That prompted Red Bull to do something different in terms of strategy and call Max in on lap 14 for a second set of soft tyres, putting him on a two-stop race.
Mercedes did not react and kept Antonelli out as it looked determined to stay on a one-stop strategy. Struggling for grip on used softs, Hamilton came in for mediums next, as did his teammate Leclerc and the McLarens.
That left a temporary top three of Antonelli, Hadjar and Russell until all came in for what was supposed to be their only pitstop, with Antonelli skipping the soft tyres entirely to go from mediums to hards on lap 25.
Verstappen did not enjoy his new-found lead all that long as he started struggling with engine braking issues, calling his Red Bull “undriveable”. It forced him into the pits on lap 32 for a second stop for mediums, dropping down to fifth position, 18 seconds behind new leader Antonelli.
On the slower hard tyres Antonelli faced a challenge from Leclerc, but both he and Ferrari teammate Hamilton were yet to stop again as Verstappen remained Antonelli’s real challenger. The Ferraris both moved to hard tyres in the final stint, which droppèd them behind Verstappen.
To get to Antonelli, though, Verstappen first had to clear second-placed Norris, who was on a one-stop strategy. Verstappen’s battle with Norris allowed Leclerc to use his fresher tyres and close the gap, with the three cars running together with ten laps to go.
At the start of lap 47, Verstappen made a late lunge on Norris to the inside of COTA’s steep Turn 1 hairpin, taking second away before Leclerc also found a way through. On much fresher tyres, Leclerc then picked off Verstappen on the back straight on lap 49 to take second position.
Antonelli’s win never came under real threat as he led Leclerc by 13 seconds, with Verstappen another four seconds behind in third.
Norris also dropped down towards Hamilton as the latter secured fourth from the reigning world champion on lap 51, which also meant the seven-time world champion remained in mathematical title contention until next week.
Hadjar finished sixth ahead of Piastri, who held off Russell for seventh. With Russell needing to avoid finishing ninth or lower to prolong his title chances, he only just managed to do so after a frustrating weekend.
Liam Lawson continued Racing Bulls’ form to fifth in the constructors’ championship by finishing ninth, with the final point going to Alpine’s Pierre Gasly.
Antonelli is now all but certain to seal the drivers’ championship in Mexico, needing just two points to become the youngest ever title winner aged 20.
Haas driver Oliver Bearman was one of three retirements, the eventual result of first-lap damage from contact with Gasly, which Bearman was handed a 10-second penalty for and provoked a brief VSC period.
Alpine’s Franco Colapinto also dropped out from the race, while Cadillac’s Valtteri Bottas retired late on with engine trouble, causing the second brief virtual safety car period of the race.
Congratulations to Kimi Antonelli in winning the COTA race and despite not sealing the championship in Austin, he has a strong chance to take the title in Mexico, the next race. Just two points is needed to achieve the dream scenario. So best wishes to Kimi in the Mexico Grand Prix next weekend.
United States Grand Prix, race results:
1 Andrea Kimi Antonelli Mercedes 1:35:16.650
2 Charles Leclerc Ferrari +13.078s
3 Max Verstappen Red Bull-Ford +17.485s
4 Lewis Hamilton Ferrari +18.515s
5 Lando Norris McLaren-Mercedes +30.521s
6 Isack Hadjar Red Bull-Ford +34.373s
7 Oscar Piastri McLaren-Mercedes +52.674s
8 George Russell Mercedes +54.303s
9 Liam Lawson Racing Bulls-Ford +79.183s
10 Pierre Gasly Alpine-Mercedes +87.516s
11 Nico Hulkenberg Audi +94.945s
12 Arvid Lindblad Racing Bulls-Ford +1 lap
13 Gabriel Bortoleto Audi +1 lap
14 Esteban Ocon Haas-Ferrari +1 lap
15 Lance Stroll Aston Martin-Honda +1 lap
16 Fernando Alonso Aston Martin-Honda +1 lap
17 Alexander Albon Williams-Mercedes +1 lap
18 Carlos Sainz Williams-Mercedes +1 lap
19 Sergio Perez Cadillac-Ferrari +1 lap
Valtteri Bottas Cadillac-Ferrari DNF
Franco Colapinto Alpine-Mercedes DNF
Oliver Bearman Haas-Ferrari DNF
Kimi Antonelli kept his composure to triumph at the United States Grand Prix and take another step towards clinching the Drivers’ Championship, edging out Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen in a strategic race.
The Italian’s superb opening lap combined with Verstappen’s poor start to give him an early lead, which he held onto through an inspired one-stop strategy to secure his ninth Grand Prix victory of the season.
While many of his rivals stopped twice, Antonelli delivered a mighty stint on the medium tyres before managing the hard compound all the way to the chequered flag, eking out a margin of 13.078s even after a Virtual Safety Car slowed the field before the final lap.
Behind him, a late move promoted Leclerc to a second consecutive P2 finish as Verstappen withstood multiple niggles with his Red Bull to complete the podium, with Lewis Hamilton adding to Ferrari’s points haul in fourth place.
Lando Norris saw his opportunity of a podium disappear with his ageing tyres, leaving him in P5 ahead of Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar and the second McLaren of Oscar Piastri.
A frustrating day for George Russell saw him wind up in eighth place, followed by Liam Lawson and Pierre Gasly in the last of the points-paying positions. Nico Hulkenberg, Arvid Lindblad and Gabriel Bortoleto missed out as they took P11 to P13, with the Brazilian bouncing back from a substantial 80-place grid penalty.
Esteban Ocon took P14 from the Aston Martin pair of Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso as Haas failed to score in their home race.
In similarly bad news for Williams, they extended their point-less streak to three events as Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz led Sergio Perez in rounding out the finishers in Austin.
There were three retirements for Alpine’s Franco Colapinto, Haas’ Ollie Bearman and Cadillac’s Valtteri Bottas, with the latter pulling to the side of the track to cause the VSC that neutralised some of the last laps.
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Kimi Antonelli is on the brink of securing his maiden Drivers’ Championship after “perfect execution” helped him win the United States Grand Prix, edging him towards an unbeatable points total.
Starting from pole position, the 20-year-old built on his strong start to lead Red Bull’s Max Verstappen before Mercedes carried out a clever one-stop strategy that enabled him to confidently control the race.
hallenges from Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and the Dutchman, who ultimately finished second and third respectively, dissipated as Antonelli’s dominance grew. After 56 laps, he crossed the line 13.078s clear of Leclerc to clinch his ninth Grand Prix victory of the 2026 season.
Speaking shortly after his triumph, Antonelli said: “It was the result we needed. The whole team deserves it so much and all this time putting in so much work on bringing this new package and finally seeing the result is very pleasant.
“It was also perfect execution from strategy to call the one-stop so I’m really happy we made it stick, and it was a great team effort.”
Victory has increased Antonelli’s points total in the drivers’ standings to 365, giving him a 123-point advantage over George Russell after the Briton finished in eighth place at the Circuit of The Americas.
As long as the Italian doesn’t lose more than 23 points to his team mate – or 24 to Lewis Hamilton – at the next round in Mexico City, he will be crowned the youngest World Champion in the history of F1.
Reflecting on that possibility, Antonelli said: “We’re very close but we’ll try to finish on a high, and hopefully we can clinch it very soon.”
He later added: “I’m very excited. I would love to clinch the title in style with a great result.
“That’s the mindset. That’s always the mindset, and that’s what the mindset is going to be from now until the end of the season. I’m just going to try to enjoy every moment because they’re moments that will always be remembered.”
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George Russell was perplexed with how his United States Grand Prix played out after finishing down in eighth, while team mate Kimi Antonelli sealed an exemplary win to leave him on the brink of title glory.
While the young Italian celebrated his ninth victory of the season, Russell was at a loss to explain what happened to his pace around the Circuit of The Americas. Compounding his struggles, the Briton was also hit with a five-second time penalty early on in the race after the stewards determined he had left the track and gained an advantage on the McLaren of Oscar Piastri on the opening lap.
With Russell having to serve that penalty on his one and only pit stop of the race, the delay helped drop him further down the order after he had initially started the Grand Prix in sixth.
Instead, the 28-year-old spent much of the rest of the encounter unable to find a way past Piastri and was left to settle for eighth, 1.6s behind the McLaren man on the road.
“Yeah, it was a very bad day,” Russell admitted afterwards. “Don’t really know why.
“[I] probably did six laps from the 50 [where] the pace was okay. The others were well off the pace, so I don’t know where the performance has gone, need to understand it. I need to come back stronger for Mexico.”
With Antonelli’s success, the Italian now stands just two points way from sealing the title – he leads Russell in the Drivers’ Championship by 123 points with 125 left to fight for.
Additionally, the Briton also faces a fight to retain second place with Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton now just a point behind following his fourth-place result in Austin.
Asked how frustrating his issues were, given how successful the car on the other side of the Mercedes garage was, Russell said: “Yeah, without a doubt.
“Right now, I don’t have the answers and, if I did, I wouldn’t be in this position. So, yeah, I need to try and work it out with my team.”
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Kimi Antonelli has claimed several memorable victories in 2026, but Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff believes his United States Grand Prix triumph was the best yet.
Antonelli didn’t quite put the World Championship beyond mathematical doubt, with Lewis Hamilton and George Russell remaining in contention. However, the Italian did all he could, taking pole position before delivering a dominant performance.
Victory was made all the sweeter by the fact that the team had struggled on Friday as they continued to explore the update package that was first seen in Malaysia, and which thus far has proved tricky to optimise.
However, by Qualifying Antonelli and his engineers had found the right window with his W17, and he never looked back.
“On Kimi’s side obviously the main headline is that for me that’s the best race that he’s delivered so far,” Wolff said on Sunday evening. “Getting off the start with the inferior tyre, and then controlling it at all times. The race of a champion – who isn’t the champion yet – but exceptional.
“And so I think he’s outperformed the car. Maybe it’s a bit harsh to say, but I think his driving style just glues with the car. We saw that in Qualifying yesterday, where on his last lap he could have been another tenth and a half or two up.”
Asked if he really thought that Austin outranked Antonelli’s charge from the back to victory at Monza, Wolff stuck to his guns.
“I’ve said that this is probably the best race I’ve seen, but my problem is that I don’t remember past races!” he joked. “So now you saying Monza, it was actually also pretty good, obviously with the advantage of the home crowd and seeing all these Tifosi that were a little bit confused wearing red and hearing the Italian anthem, but with the Mercedes outfit up on the podium.
“I think we’re going to see more Kimi caps, Mercedes caps next year. Yeah, so both of them were pretty good. But the headline ‘this is the best’ we can keep!”
Reflecting on Antonelli’s form in 2026, Wolff also noted how relaxed the Italian remains despite the pressure surrounding the World Championship.
“I think maybe it was his benefit that the regulations were all new,” he said. “Last year he came in, and those cars existed for four years. The other drivers were used to it, and all new for everyone this year. And he just made it stick, with his mindset, with his easiness about approaching things.
“He’s come to my office before getting ready, before getting dressed, and just sat down on that sofa and said, ‘I’m going to enjoy this one. And isn’t it funny? I’m not thinking at all about the championship.’ And I said, ‘Well, exactly. Stick to that attitude. You have the best job in the world. Don’t forget that.’ So he has also the right mindset.”
https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/why-wolff-believes-that-austin-victory-was-antonellis-best-race-so-far.5EknFIzoqV4V2lU00IzdER
Max Verstappen secured his tenth podium finish of the 2026 Formula 1 season in Austin, his sixth in succession since his crash at Zandvoort. It is an impressive statistic, although it did little to satisfy him at the Circuit of the Americas.
On Saturday, the pace appeared to be there to take pole position – at least judging by Verstappen’s impressive Q2 lap – but he inexplicably lost grip in Q3. Based on the practice sessions, his race pace still appeared good enough to challenge for the win, but according to Verstappen, too many small things went wrong during the race.
“It was pretty frustrating, to be honest, just not a really good race for us”, Verstappen said in the post-race press conference.
That frustration stems partly from problems that have been troubling Red Bull for some time and partly from decisions specific to this race that ultimately backfired.
“In hindsight, of course, it’s very easy to say, but for whatever reason, the softer compounds were not really working that well today. Then also, I think the way that we used our tyres was wrong, the order of the stints.
“I think at one point, it was quite clear that the people on the harder compounds were finding a lot of grip, so I guess we didn’t really react to that. We were probably sticking a bit too much to our belief from the last two races, where the softer compounds were the fastest. But clearly here, that didn’t work.”
In recent race weekends, that had been one of the areas where Red Bull made the difference. The RB22 had been particularly good at managing the softer tyres and keeping them alive in the right operating window, but in Austin the opposite proved to be the case, as team principal Laurent Mekies also admitted after the race.
Verstappen also complained over the team radio about issues related to the power unit, to which the team responded with some engine braking suggestions.
“Besides the strategy, we had too many issues with the power unit, where it was just very inconsistent behaviour around the corners. Every lap and every corner, the behaviour was different”, Verstappen said.
“You can’t build up a rhythm, you can’t build any kind of consistency in the car. And then I had a slow pit stop as well, so yeah, too many things today that just didn’t go well.”
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/max-verstappen-pinpoints-two-recurring-red-bull-problems-we-should-use-sign-language/10868474/
The United States Grand Prix weekend was something of a mixed one for Ferrari, and in the end a solid second place was not quite enough for Charles Leclerc, who made it clear that he wanted more.
Not for the first time this year, the team looked good in practice, with Leclerc fastest on Friday, and Lewis Hamilton topping the times in FP3.
However things went awry when it mattered in Qualifying, with Leclerc having to settle for P4, and Hamilton for P5, albeit in a very tightly packed grid.
On race day the team went for soft tyres, and both men made progress at the start. As their chosen two-stop strategy unfolded Leclerc was able to charge up to runner-up spot behind Kimi Antonelli, passing Max Verstappen along the way, while Hamilton followed the Red Bull driver home in P4.
On the face of it, second was a decent result for Leclerc but after the flag he expressed some frustration, perhaps wondering what might have been had he started from higher than fourth – and potentially found a way to beat Antonelli.
“I don’t know if you had all the radio, but very early in the race, Charles was targeting P1,” said Team Principal Fred Vasseur. “And when you do P2 and you target P1, you are not happy. But this I like as a feeling.
“Honestly, at the end of the weekend, I think it’s a good week, a good result for us for the third or fourth race in a row, we are the team scoring the biggest amount of points.
“I think we are on the right way, but for sure, when you have this feeling that you are in a good shape on the weekend and you do P2, you can have also a bit of frustration. But the frustration sometimes is good.”
Vasseur was confident that the team had opted for the best strategy.
“Today I think that it was between one and two stops,” he said. “We had to be aggressive starting from P4, P5. It was a good call from us.
“Now when you start a bit behind, you start to have the dirty air, and you have to be a bit more aggressive. And without perhaps the Virtual Safety Car at the end, Lewis was perhaps able to come back on Max, I don’t know. Probably yes.
“But overall, I think it’s a good weekend in terms of pace, execution. Everything went well – except the last lap in Q3. It’s true for us, but if you have a look on [Saturday], I think it was quite particular, that the two McLarens didn’t improve, Russell didn’t improve, the two Red Bulls didn’t improve.
“I think what is true is that with the cars or the tyres, the window is very narrow, and as soon as you are a bit out, quickly you lose two or three tenths. And today in F1 [in] the top eight, two or three tenths can be a sixth position.
“It means that you can move from the super result to nowhere for gust of wind, or you slide a little bit too much in the out lap, or you have to slow down, as we had the case in Madrid, you have to slow down a little bit, don’t stick to your pace in the out lap, or whatever, the impact is huge.”
https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/vasseur-admits-to-ferrari-frustration-as-pace-was-there-to-fight-for-victory.2dt48UPXlFVMj5yaSrWC3V