Kimi Antonelli claimed a dominant victory at the Monaco Grand Prix to further extend his championship lead, in a largely chaotic race that featured seven DNFs, two safety cars, a red flag, and an unusually high number of penalties.
Monaco is a track which often receives criticism for providing largely uneventful races. While there may not have been many overtakes, the race was certainly full of action, chaos, and unpredictability.
In Saturday’s qualifying session, home hero Charles Leclerc looked to be in strong contention for a fourth pole position at Monaco; however, he qualified fourth after crashing during his final lap. Antonelli produced an impressive lap to take pole on a weekend when Mercedes were not expected to be as strong as previous weekends this season. The Italian teenager pipped Max Verstappen to P1 by just 0.043 seconds.
At Sunday’s race start, Verstappen suffered engine problems, meaning he could only limp off the line, forcing him to retire on lap one. Antonelli looked to be in control of the whole race, as he was 30 seconds ahead of Hamilton in P2 before the safety cars.
Lance Stroll’s crash on lap 60 brought out the first safety car, while Leclerc crashed in the same place as Stroll on the safety car restart. This led to a red flag and a 40-minute delay to clear the debris, as well as to allow officials to inspect the track surface and tarmac where the two crashes happened.
The race resumed from a standing start, which did not seem to faze Antonelli, as he got away well, keeping Hamilton behind in P2.
This dominant win looked like Antonelli’s best performance in Formula 1 so far, as he secured his first grand slam by leading every lap and setting the fastest lap, which was over one second quicker than anyone else.
Hamilton secured a strong P2, his third podium of the 2026 season. Isack Hadjar achieved his first Red Bull podium in P3, which is also the first podium for the team other than Verstappen since Sergio Perez in China 2024.
There was an unusually high number of penalties, most of them being for speeding in the pit lane.
One of the drivers who suffered most from this was George Russell, whose penalty was served incorrectly when he made a pit stop under the safety car, resulting in a more severe drive-through penalty to be issued. This dropped Russell from a potential podium finish to outside the points — a significant blow to his championship campaign following his previous DNF in Canada.
Pierre Gasly was also hit hard by penalties, as he initially crossed the line in an impressive P3, until two five-second penalties demoted him to P7.
On McLaren’s 1000th Grand Prix weekend, defending world champion Lando Norris was forced to retire from the race for the second weekend in a row, due to a battery failure. Oscar Piastri was able to salvage a P4.
With DNFs and penalties catching many usual frontrunners out, there were huge opportunities for midfield teams to claim crucial points.
Racing Bulls achieved an impressive double-points finish, with Liam Lawson P5 and Arvid Lindblad in P6, the latter achieving one of the only overtakes of the race with a move on Alex Albon on lap 49.
Albon finished in P8, Esteban Ocon claimed P9, and Fernando Alonso achieved a hugely impressive P10 to claim a point in an Aston Martin which was said to risk causing “permanent nerve damage” for their drivers at the start of the season.
In the drivers’ championship, Antonelli extends his lead to 66 points, while Hamilton now moves ahead of Russell for P2. We are not even a third of the way through the season yet, but there are plenty more opportunities for Russell and the Ferrari drivers to catch up, or perhaps for Antonelli to claim further wins.
“Mercedes-AMG F1 W17 E Performance of Andrea Kimi Antonelli (028A8073)” by Yu Chu Chin is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.