Kimi Antonelli claimed his ninth win of the season at the United States Grand Prix on Sunday, but the drivers’ title will have to wait another week. The Antonelli US Grand Prix win saw the 20-year-old Mercedes driver finish 13.078 seconds clear of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, with four-time champion Max Verstappen third for Red Bull.
Antonelli would have become the youngest champion in Formula 1 history if his Mercedes team-mate George Russell had finished lower than eighth and Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton had failed to make the top four. Hamilton came home fourth, and Russell took eighth, so Antonelli heads to next week’s race in Mexico needing only to finish ninth to claim the two points that will seal the title.
A race controlled from the front
Antonelli started from pole position and already held a two-second lead by the end of the opening lap. From that point, the result never looked in doubt, barring mechanical failure or a pit stop disaster.
Leclerc started third and beat Verstappen off the start, but the four-time champion wasted no time in reclaiming second place. Leclerc retook second in the latter part of the race, leaving Verstappen to hold on for third as Hamilton closed in behind him.
While the other leaders pitted early, Antonelli stayed out until lap 24 and rejoined in fourth. He quickly picked off the cars ahead to reclaim the lead, completing a one-stop strategy that his team executed without error.
“Good job everyone, that’s the result we needed,” Antonelli said on team radio. “Let’s keep pushing.”
He added later: “The whole team deserved it so much. They put in so much work bringing this new package, and finally to see the result is very pleasant. It was also a perfect execution from strategy to call for a one-stop, and I’m pleased to see it stick. We are very close now [to the title], but we will try to finish on a high, and hopefully we can clinch it very soon.”
Leclerc and Verstappen react
Leclerc said Ferrari would likely have fared better if the team had followed up dominant practice performances with better qualifying. He still took encouragement from the race itself.
“It was a good race, but unfortunately, we came up just short of our target, which was victory, but it’s positive for us,” Leclerc said. “We had good pace.”
Verstappen’s third place means he is now mathematically out of the running for a fifth championship title. The Dutchman pointed to pace and tyre choice as the reasons for the gap to the front.
“I think our overall pace was not good enough and the tyres we had available were not the right ones,” Verstappen said. “But we are still on the podium even if we were a bit lucky at the end.”
World champion Lando Norris of McLaren came in fifth, with Isack Hadjar sixth in the second Red Bull. Oscar Piastri was seventh for McLaren, ahead of Russell, Racing Bulls driver Liam Lawson and Alpine’s Pierre Gasly.
Norris, the outgoing champion, ran second until the closing laps, when his tyres appeared to give up and he had to settle for fifth. Russell, who has had poor luck all season, took a five-second penalty for running off the track on the opening lap and struggled to get past Piastri.
Antonelli US Grand Prix win in context
The win puts Antonelli on the edge of history. He seeks to become the youngest champion in Formula 1 history, and the first Italian champion since Alberto Ascari won for Ferrari in 1953. The current record belongs to Sebastian Vettel, who was 23 years and 133 days when he won his first title in 2010.
Antonelli arrived at the race weekend in strong form, though Leclerc topped practice, as covered in our report on Leclerc’s practice pace. Verstappen’s season has faded by contrast, despite his win in Singapore, as covered in our report on the Singapore Grand Prix.
Verstappen also won the Singapore sprint in a race marked by nine retirements, as covered in our report on the Singapore sprint. Russell, meanwhile, set the pace in Singapore practice, as covered in our report on Russell’s practice run.
