Mexico City 2026: Antonelli Is Crowned, Verstappen Wins, and Ferrari Falls Short

Kimi Antonelli became Formula 1 world champion on Sunday in Mexico City, and the race he did it in barely needed him. He finished third, on the podium between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton, but the title was sealed before the chequered flag. Verstappen won, so Antonelli did not even need to finish, and the afternoon was shaped by the two cars that should have won it for Ferrari and by a Mercedes that had its worst day of the season for the wrong driver.

At 20 years and 68 days, Antonelli is the youngest champion in the sport's history, well clear of Sebastian Vettel, who was 23 years and 134 days old when he won in 2010. He is also the first Italian champion since Alberto Ascari in 1953, and only the third in the sport's history after Giuseppe Farina in 1950. He did it in his second season, having been in tears at Spa 15 months ago after qualifying 18th in the middle of a rookie slump that had people asking whether Mercedes had promoted him too early.

A Pole Worth Remembering

Saturday gave us the best qualifying of the year. Hamilton took pole by 0.009 seconds from Russell, his first pole for Ferrari and his first in Formula 1 since 2023. It was his 105th career pole, and at 41 he is the oldest driver to start from the front since Mario Andretti at Monza in 1982, also in a Ferrari. Leclerc was third. Verstappen qualified fourth and Antonelli fifth, though Verstappen dropped to fifth on the grid after a penalty from practice. Liam Lawson was excluded from qualifying for an MGU-K deployment breach after his Q2 lap and started from the pit lane.

The pre-race talk was about the front row. Hamilton against Russell for second in the championship, the longest run to Turn 1 of the season, and Antonelli needing only ninth to finish the job.

Lap One and the Ferrari Problem

Hamilton held the lead briefly after a clean launch. Russell, starting alongside him, did not. A deployment problem on the run to the first corner left his Mercedes going backwards, and he lost places in bunches. Verstappen, meanwhile, got away well.

The decisive moment came at Turn 4. The two Ferraris arrived side by side, too fast to make the corner, and both left the track. Leclerc emerged in front. Verstappen, who had stayed on tarmac, went past Hamilton in the confusion. Within a few corners the order was Leclerc, Verstappen, Hamilton, Antonelli, Russell.

The stewards' verdict was that both cars had entered Turn 4 with excessive speed, that neither could have made the corner on track, and that Leclerc had completed an overtake while off the circuit. The baseline penalty is ten seconds, but because Hamilton was also off track on the inside and it was early on the first lap, they gave five.

Hamilton thought that was nowhere near enough, and the argument is easy to follow. A five-second penalty is served at the pit stop, so Leclerc spent the first stint in clean air building a cushion, while Hamilton sat in the dirty air of Verstappen's Red Bull and lost more than five seconds there. "The problem with the five-second penalty is that he's got clean air, he doesn't have to manage like the rest of us," he said on the radio. "He should just have to give the position back." Later "We've got problems. Big, big problems." And, of the stewards "basically handed Charles this win."

Frederic Vasseur's reaction, once the dust settled, was blunt. "When you are 1-2 in Turn 4, you don't imagine that you won't win the race."

Russell's Afternoon

If Hamilton's grievance had a logic to it, Russell's Sunday was simply bad luck followed by a bad decision. The deployment problem at the start was out of his hands. What happened next was not. Trying to recover places on the first lap, he made contact with Isack Hadjar's Red Bull, sending Hadjar spinning to the back, and picked up a ten-second penalty. The Race noted that he was alongside for some distance and had little room to give, which makes the penalty look harsh, but it was applied all the same.

He finished sixth, stuck behind the Leclerc and Norris fight for fourth at the end. That result dropped him to fourth in the championship, behind Verstappen and Hamilton, in a season he started as the favourite.

He then skipped the media pen, and Mercedes were fined for it. Toto Wolff apologised to him afterwards, saying the team had let him down, and the team described him as distraught. It is hard not to feel for him. He did not choose to be at the wrong end of Antonelli's rise, and the one weekend where he had the front row was the one where his car failed him on the straight.

The Race That Mostly Wasn't

For the first 44 laps, almost nothing happened. The Race described it as an event almost devoid of overtaking, apart from drivers recovering from trouble, and that is a fair summary. Leclerc led. Verstappen stayed close enough to take the lead at the pit stops. Hamilton was third.

Strategy provided the little there was. Leclerc stopped on lap 27 and sat in the pit lane for his five seconds, and Verstappen, who stopped at the same time, came out ahead. Hamilton pitted a lap later. Antonelli and Russell stayed out on the soft tyres, with Antonelli leading for a stretch and running only a few tenths slower than the Ferraris. Norris stopped on lap 40, a slow stop of around six seconds.

Aston Martin's day ended early. Fernando Alonso stopped on lap 7 with what the team described as abnormal pressure levels in the power unit, and Lance Stroll followed a minute later. Alonso was disconsolate afterwards: "I'm doing my best, you know. Every lap I do, every morning I wake up, every preparation I do, the food I take in, everything is focused on performing at my best behind the wheel, but I'm not able to accumulate enough laps." Honda blamed cooling and Alonso suggested the altitude had been underestimated. Seventeen races after a season that began with a car that could barely complete laps in Australia, that is a bleak thing to read.

Bottas and the Red Flag

On lap 44, the race changed. Valtteri Bottas's Cadillac suffered a front-left suspension failure at high speed and went backwards into the barrier at Turn 1. He climbed out and moved gingerly but he was unhurt, which was a relief given how violent it looked. The Race called the nature of the exit unnerving and noted the potential consequences. For a brand new team, reliability problems are expected, but this one could have been much worse.

A safety car became a red flag to repair the barriers. The order for the restart was taken from the previous completed lap, which put Hamilton third behind Verstappen and Leclerc, and Antonelli, who had only just pitted, fourth. Everyone fitted fresh soft tyres. Sergio Perez, on the day of his 300th grand prix, had been running as high as 13th and held his own until a slow first stop and a pit lane speeding penalty undid it.

The Restart

Hamilton had his chance. At the standing restart he got past Leclerc and went wheel to wheel with Verstappen into Turn 1, the two cars getting very close but avoiding contact. Verstappen kept the lead. Leclerc locked up and picked up a flat spot, and soon afterwards Antonelli went down the inside of him to take third, a lunge that was not strictly necessary for a driver who only needed ninth. It was the move that guaranteed Antonelli would take the title from the podium rather than from somewhere off it.

Then Hamilton spent more than twenty laps hunting Verstappen. The Ferrari was quicker on paper but, as the Motorsport.com report put it, it could not find a way past on the straights with a relatively underpowered engine. He got within a few tenths. He never got close enough. Verstappen defended robustly but, according to the stewards, legally, with an incident at the start of the restart noted and no further action taken. Another safety car followed after Arvid Lindblad and Oscar Piastri collided at Turn 2 and Lindblad went into the wall, and the race resumed with eight laps to go. Verstappen led them out, with Hamilton second and Antonelli third.

It was Verstappen's third win in four races. He needed help from both Ferrari and Mercedes to be in position, and then did what he has always done once he got there. "Vintage" is the word The Race used and it fits.

The Title

When the flag fell, Antonelli's radio went quiet and then filled with sobbing. "We did it, we did it, thank you so much." He later said he backed off on the final lap because he could not see the track through the tears and thought he might crash. On the podium, Verstappen and Hamilton lifted him onto their shoulders, which will be one of the images of the season: two drivers who have defined the previous two eras, hoisting the one who looks set to define the next.

Wolff had promised the tequila would be on ice, and Antonelli said he would make an exception to his usual habits. His father Marco, mother Veronica and sister Maggie were all in the paddock. Maggie had missed his Monza win celebrations because of school the next morning.

Verdicts have already come in from The Race's writers, who argue the title should not be diminished because the 2026 regulations changed the order of things. Edd Straw pointed to Russell's struggles as proof that extracting the most from the car was far from easy. Antonelli finishes the year with nine wins, five of them consecutive, and a comeback at Monza from 19th on the grid that Russell watched from the podium looking close to tears. His few errors, a crash in Australian practice and a clipped wall at Baku, were minor against that record.

Post-Race Penalties

The result on the road was not the final one. Piastri was handed a ten-second penalty for the collision with Lindblad, which dropped him to 13th. Colapinto and Gasly both received yellow-flag penalties that wiped out all of Alpine's points, a swing that left them 35 points behind Racing Bulls in the fight for fifth. The final top six read Verstappen, Hamilton, Antonelli, Leclerc, Norris, Russell. Lawson inherited seventh from the pit lane after his qualifying exclusion and a penalty earlier in the weekend for colliding with Verstappen in practice. Hadjar was ninth after the spin and Ryo Hirakawa, who made his debut when Haas replaced Esteban Ocon mid-weekend, finished tenth in a debut he got entirely through other people's penalties but drove respectably.

The Ocon situation is murky. After Haas confirmed he would not take part, Ocon said there had been a difference of viewpoints the night before and categorically rejected any suggestion of physical violence. Rafa Camara, who has the 2027 seat, is expected to make his debut in Brazil.

What Comes Next

Hamilton demanded "serious talks" at Ferrari and he will get them. Vasseur said drivers have to show respect to the 2,000 people who work for the team, which is as pointed a thing as a team principal can say in public. This is not the first time Hamilton and Leclerc have raced each other harder than they raced anyone else this year, and having lost a win that was theirs to lose, the conversation will be uncomfortable.

Four races remain, starting with Sao Paulo on 6 to 8 November, with the Middle East rounds still subject to the regional situation. The title is settled, but there is plenty left to resolve: second place in the championship, a Ferrari relationship that needs repair, a Russell who needs a better ending to this season than the one he has had, and a Red Bull that has found its form with the year almost over.

Antonelli has the thing he wanted at 20. The rest of the grid has the winter to work out how to stop him doing it again.