Antonelli the first Italian to win at Monza since 1966!
Andrea Kimi Antonelli delivered the drive of his young career at the Italian Grand Prix on September 6, charging from 19th on the grid to win ahead of Mercedes teammate George Russell. Max Verstappen completed the podium, while Lando Norris beat Oscar Piastri to fourth after a tense late battle. It didn’t matter that Antonelli isn’t a Ferrari driver. Fans around the globe were ecstatic.
Antonelli started near the back, due to power-unit changes that incurred a 30-place penalty, but gained seven positions before an early red flag. Charles Leclerc caused the stoppage when, while battling Verstappen and Piastri, he touched the dirty edge of the circuit and crashed heavily. The Ferrari driver was unhurt, but his home race ended almost immediately.
Antonelli climbed to eighth on the restart and methodically worked forward. Russell had taken the lead from surprise polesitter Pierre Gasly, but Antonelli reached his teammate before the race’s halfway point and briefly passed him on Lap 18 of 53. After trading positions at the front of the pack on several consecutive laps, Mercedes told the pair to hold position with Russell in the lead. If they were going to battle for the win, they needed to put some distance between themselves and Max Verstappen who was close behind in third. The contest remained unresolved until Lance Stroll’s retirement on lap 28 triggered a Virtual Safety Car: Mercedes split its strategies, leaving Russell on worn hard tires while fitting Antonelli with fresh mediums.
The tire offset proved decisive. Antonelli recovered the positions surrendered by pitting, caught Russell and completed the pass for victory despite a brief excursion through the gravel. He won by 3.857 seconds, becoming the first Italian driver to triumph at Monza since Ludovico Scarfiotti did it in 1966. Mercedes’ race pace was comfortably the class of the field, although the team cautioned that Monza’s unusual low-downforce configuration may flatter its advantage.
Verstappen’s third place represented a strong recovery after his Zandvoort retirement, but Red Bull lacked Mercedes’ straight-line deployment. Norris and Piastri finished fourth and fifth after running wheel-to-wheel late on; Norris briefly touched the grass before taking the position on the final lap. Hamilton recovered from an opening-lap incident with Leclerc to finish sixth, but Ferrari’s home weekend was a major setback.
Antonelli now leads Russell by 66 points, with Hamilton 76 behind and Norris 96 adrift. Leclerc, Verstappen and Piastri remain mathematically alive but increasingly require a dramatic swing. Mercedes’ one-two stretches its Constructors’ Championship lead to 122 points over Ferrari, with McLaren another 59 points back.
Haas showed evidence that its Monza upgrade works, but excessive degradation erased an encouraging start. Both soft-shod cars reached the top 10 before the red flag. Oliver Bearman later held 10th, only to lose ground as he overworked his tires and missed the VSC advantage; he finished 15th. Esteban Ocon fell away after the restart and placed 16th. Haas nevertheless remains seventh in the standings, five points ahead of Audi, and believes resolving component inconsistencies could put the upgraded car into a sustainable points fight.
Cadillac again finished last among the classified teams, with Sergio Pérez 18th and Valtteri Bottas 19th. Pérez’s soft-to-medium strategy briefly placed him ahead of Russell during the VSC sequence, but severe straight-line and deployment weaknesses left him unable to defend; a five-second escape-road penalty compounded his race. Bottas’s promising first stint kept him near Williams before a slow stop trapped him among blue flags. The positive was reliability—both cars finished—but Cadillac remains scoreless. Pérez expects forthcoming parts and a newer Ferrari power unit to address the team’s most damaging weakness. See you next week at the new track in Madrid.