Kimi Antonelli won a dramatic Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix on Sunday, extending his championship lead to a commanding 66 points after a race twice interrupted by crashes and a red flag.
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The lights-to-flag victory on the iconic streets of Monte Carlo marks the 19-year-old Italian’s fifth consecutive win, continuing an extraordinary streak in his sophomore F1 season.
Fellow Mercedes driver George Russell, his closest rival for the championship, finished out of the points after his team failed to properly execute a 5-second time penalty — a mistake that resulted in an even harsher sanction and dropped him to the back of the grid.
Lewis Hamilton of Ferrari finished second, vaulting 2 points ahead of Russell to second place in the championship, with partner Kim Kardashian watching from the paddock as he lifted the trophy. Isack Hadjar completed the podium in third, claiming his first Formula 1 top-three finish for Red Bull.
It is Antonelli’s fifth win in a row, and the second consecutive race he has won while Russell has failed to score. Antonelli’s championship lead over Russell is now 68 points.
“It’s been an incredible weekend. Incredible race,” Antonelli said in a post-race live interview. “Job’s not finished. You know, it’s still a long season. We got to keep pushing, keep raising the bar. The goal is to keep performing like this.”
With 16 races remaining and 25 points on offer for a victory, Russell has ample opportunity to recover. But if Antonelli’s form holds, the deficit will be a monumental task to overcome.
Russell had qualified sixth on Saturday, four tenths off Antonelli’s pace, and his Sunday unraveled early when he became stuck behind the slower Hadjar. In a darkly symbolic moment, he was lapped by his own teammate around Lap 54.
Russell was among roughly half a dozen drivers penalized for pit-lane speeding — an unusually high number.
“More penalties than a World Cup final,” Sky F1 broadcaster David Croft quipped on the air.
Monaco is the crown jewel of the Formula 1 calendar, a race every driver covets. The circuit winds through the streets of Monte Carlo — past the harbor, a famous casino, and through a tunnel — demanding relentless concentration as cars brush inches from the barriers.
The last three winners of the Monaco Grand Prix — Lando Norris in 2025, Leclerc in 2024 and Max Verstappen in 2023 — all failed to finish the race. Leclerc grew up in the city and was on course for third place before his car hit the barriers.
The race was upended on Lap 60 after a crash that led to a safety car, followed by another crash and safety car. The race was soon halted by a red flag after F1 officials said they needed to inspect a “track break-up” at Turn 19, where the two crashes by Lance Stroll of Aston Martin and Charles Leclerc of Ferrari occurred.
“It’s like I had no rear brakes at all,” a frustrated Leclerc said in an interview broadcast on Sky F1. “Today I look like an idiot.”
The race restarted on Lap 68 with 10 laps to go. Antonelli held his lead in a standing start.
The newer generation of cars, which are smaller, again struggled to overtake around the track. In the first stint of the race, Russell and Norris were both bottled up behind slower cars but couldn’t find a way past them on the narrow streets.
There was also gamesmanship by several teams, using one driver to slow down the pack to help their other driver gain positions.
At one point Norris, the reigning world champion and last year’s Monaco winner, was asked by his team to purposely slow down and hold up Russell to try and help McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri. Norris, who was nursing suspected power unit issues throughout the race, eventually retired.
Such actions are legal under F1 rules but seen as antithetical to good racing. Drivers tend not to like executing them.
“We’re being too f—ing smart with this,” Alex Albon said by team radio after he was told to deploy the same tactic and slow down a train of cars to help Williams teammate Franco Colapinto.
F1 has struggled to make Monaco more conducive to wheel-to-wheel racing. The Grand Prix has been criticized as a processional where Saturday hot laps decide the result.
Verstappen qualified second but stalled at the start, falling to last space as his car moved sluggishly. He was soon called into the pit lane to retire from the race.
“The engine just dropped dead,” Verstappen said.
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