The more Andrea Kimi Antonelli wins races, the more history he makes.
A flawless performance in Monte Carlo makes Antonelli the youngest winner of the Monaco Grand Prix in the race’s esteemed history, at just 19 years and nine and a half months old.
Fox Sports, available on Kayo Sports, is the only place to watch every practice, qualifying session and race in the 2026 FIA Formula One World Championship™ LIVE in 4K. New to Kayo? Join now and get your first month for just $1.
He’s the first Italian to win the famous race in 22 years, dating back to Jarno Trulli’s 2004 win for Renault.
But perhaps the most exciting history is the chapter yet to be written.
No driver in Formula 1 history has won five grands prix in succession in a year without winning the world championship by the end of it.
Perhaps it was recognition of this trajectory — subconscious or otherwise — that had Mercedes boss Toto Wolff join Antonelli on the podium for his first rostrum appearance in a decade.
Antonelli’s story is Wolff’s story.
When Antonelli scored his breakthrough win in China earlier this year, the reaction was relief mixed with vindication that the Italian young gun really could do it.
Now, though, it’s validation of Wolff’s belief that Antonelli could be the next Formula 1 great.
After all, we’re no longer talking about potential. He’s doing the business week after week.
“It’s unbelievable what he’s able to deliver,” Wolff told Sky Sports. “He’s having control. He’s at times 1.5 seconds quicker than everybody else. [At the] restarts, he builds the gap. It’s really unbelievable.”
Mercedes driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli, right, of Italy, celebrates on the podium with his team principal Toto Wolff after winning the Monaco Grand Prix.Source: AP
There’s one more piece of history Antonelli made on Sunday.
Winning from pole after leading every lap and setting the fastest lap of the race is known as a grand chelem — a grand slam — in Grand Prix racing.
That feat had been achieved just 70 times and by just 27 drivers in the 1154 grands prix before Sunday.
Antonelli completed the 71st grand chelem in history — and not only that, but he became the 28th and the youngest driver ever to do so.
“It’s an incredible moment to live,” he told Sky Sports.
“I tried to embrace the pressure as much as possible, because I don’t want to let the pressure destroy me like it did last year in the European season.
“I try to embrace the pressure, the challenge, and I try to enjoy it as much as possible without worrying about anything else other than just driving.”
The pressure will keep increasing the closer her gets to the championship, but there’s no sign yet that it could make him crack.
Instead it’s the more experienced driver in the other car who seems to be wilting.
READ MORE
‘100% I wasn’t’: Piastri blasts ‘f***ed’ Monaco penalty as McLaren make honest admission
‘I’m going home’: Max’s hilarious act as Monaco race ‘completely f***ed’
Monaco madness! Antonelli does it again, Oscar Piastri rises as SEVEN fail to finish
Selfless Lando sacrifices race for Oscar | 00:59
HOW COOKED IS RUSSELL?
On the toast scale, his bread is certainly moving from white towards a deep tan.
At 68 points adrift and remarkably now down to third in the championship, there’s no talking around the fact that Russell’s championship campaign is in dire health.
The lack of pace is one thing, and the Englishman talked openly after qualifying about the way he feels this year’s car no longer suits his driving style, leaving him languishing while Antonelli excels.
More decisive on Sunday, though, was a certain looseness — perhaps even a sloppiness, if you were being particularly critical — that seems certain to see him punished eventually.
Twice he escaped the stewards clutches in the first part of the race — first for a possible start infringement and later for crossing the blend line on pit exit. On both occasions he was found to be just inside the rules.
Unavoidable, however, was a penalty for speeding in the pit lane, which is always a slam-dunk offence.
Though there is some consternation about the number of speeding penalties handed down in the race — more on that below — what happened next can’t be explained away by the peculiarities of the pit lane speed gun.
Russell pitted unexpectedly at the first safety car, but his team, unprepared for his arrival, started work on his car immediately after Antonelli’s service was complete rather than serving the penalty first.
It was a huge own goal. The punishment for improperly executing the infringement is a drive-through penalty.
Unfortunately for Russell, his drive-through had to be served shortly after the red flag restart, dumping him out of the points.
“The punishment doesn’t fit the crime, P3 down to P14,” he told Sky Sports before explaining that he had attempted to argue his case with the stewards during the red flag.
“I had a 20-second gap behind me to [Pierre] Gasly. I probably gained 0.1 seconds through the pit lane with that software glitch and ended up losing 12 positions because of that.
“I don’t really know what to say. It’s two races in a row. It could have been I won the race last week, I could’ve maybe been P3, P4 today. It’s 40 points down the drain for things outside of my control.”
Sixth placed qualifier George Russell of Great Britain and Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team in parc ferme during qualifying ahead of the F1 Grand Prix of Monaco.Source: Getty Images
Of course it’s not quite true to say his Monaco non-score was outside his control. He was told not to pit but boxed anyway, putting his team in a position to make an extremely costly error.
He must share at least equal blame for his predicament — and what a predicament it is.
He’s almost three clear race wins behind his rampaging teammate after just six rounds. His pre-season title favouritism has been obliterated.
“Really we just need to keep going,” Wolff said with a faint air of someone clutching at straws.
“This is a long championship. Last year everyone was saying this is [Oscar] Piastri’s, and then it swung.”
Last year Lando Norris had to turn around a 34-point deficit in nine rounds to win the title, a required score rate of 3.8 points per race.
Russell needs 68 points in 16 weekends, or 4.3 points per weekend. Already his mountain is steeper — especially because it will require a sustained performance for the rest of the year to complete the climb.
He can still win the title through the power of his own results, without needing any mistakes from Antonelli.
But not only does Antonelli not look likely to make mistakes, he doesn’t look beatable either.
Russell’s bread keeps toasting.
Monaco track starts to break apart?! | 03:31
WHAT WAS WITH ALL THE SPEEDING INFRINGEMENTS ANYWAY?
The kernel of Russell’s disaster was a bizarrely sensitive pit lane speed trap that triggered an unusual number of speeding penalties during the Grand Prix.
Speeding penalties are rare, especially in Monte Carlo. Because the corner preceding pit exit is so slow, there’s no need for drivers to try to be as late on the brakes as possible before hitting the speed limiter. Instead they actually speed up to the limit as they enter.
And yet multiple drivers, and some more than once, were handed time penalties for exceeding 60 kilometres per hour in the lane.
Russell might like to think he was the worse affected, though the sting for him was the non-serving of the penalty.
The hardest hit was actually Pierre Gasly, who lost a chance to stand on the Monte Carlo podium because of a pair of speeding penalties.
“I’m just heartbroken,” an emotional Gasly told Sky Sports. “I don’t have the words. I have too much emotion to process, and I just can’t get my head around what happened.
“It just doesn’t sound fair. Triple-checking with the team, they said the right speed in the car. On both occasions I put the pit limited way before the line.
“We were working so hard for this moment. For 10 years I try to grab every opportunity … we passed the road in third position in front of all the French people, and it gets taken away from us.”
‘Completely s***! Guys what the f***’ | 00:49
Alpine confirmed after the race that it would request a right of review from the FIA.
There was no clear answer as to why so many drivers seemed to unexpectedly trip the speed gun, but there are working theories.
The detection tool is a series of average speed loops through pit lane, with speed calculated by how long it takes a car to travel a set distance.
There was some speculation during the race that the tight lines taken by the drivers on entry or on exit effectively shortcut this average speed loop — that is, the drivers travelled less distance than expected, which showed up as them going faster than the speed limit.
Some have also speculated that because drivers speed up to 60 kilometres per hour as they enter pit lane rather than slow down to below the limit, there may have been some instances of the limiter blipping to allow speed to fractionally increase beyond the limit, which would also trip the loop.
The FIA system is reportedly accurate to within 0.1 kilometres per, so it wouldn’t take much of a glitch for a driver to exceed the limit — and like the technical regulations, you’re either in or you’re out.
It seems unlikely that Alpine would be able to recover Gasly’s podium. Perhaps there would have been a chance had all the speeding penalties had been applied post race, but several drivers served their infringements during the Grand Prix — Hamilton and Piastri, for example — meaning their penalties are baked into the results.
Assuming all offenders were penalised for the same reason, the FIA would only be opening another can of worms by allowing some drivers to escape punishment rather than enforcing the same rules — controversial or not — for everyone.
‘Something is going to explode!’ | 00:55
FERRARI’S OFF-TRACK WIN
Despite pre-weekend favouritism, Ferrari walked away from the Monaco Grand Prix with a mixed bag of results.
Lewis Hamilton was second — his best finish in Monte Carlo since winning the race in 2019 — but was never going to be anything more than second, such was the performance gulf to Mercedes.
Charles Leclerc’s day ended understeering into the barriers approaching the penultimate corner just minutes after Lance Stroll had made what looked like exactly the same error.
Unusually for racing drivers, neither took the excuse of the track clearly breaking up in the braking zone, where a section of the public road had been recently resurface but wasn’t standing up to the rigours of Grand Prix cars.
Stroll blamed his car, which on Friday had also ejected teammate Fernando Alonso into the barriers.
Leclerc blamed his “f***ing brakes” for catapulting him into the barriers.
“I’ve always been very honest, and no matter how many mistakes I did, I would hate to look at myself in the mirror and see myself finding excuses,” he told Sky Sports. “That why I’m always bluntly honest whenever I’m in front of cameras, but I’m not going to take any of it today.
“I touched the brakes and … on the front brakes it just broke a lot more than what I thought and in the rear brakes I had no deceleration at all.
“Today I look like an idiot, and when you look like an idiot for a mistake of yours, it’s fine, but it’s borderline dangerous.”
Second placed Lewis Hamilton of Great Britain and Scuderia Ferrari sprays Champagne on the podium during the F1 Grand Prix of Monaco.Source: Getty Images
He said he would try Hamilton’s braking set-up from this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix in a bid to fix his struggles.
But in remarkable late-breaking news on Sunday night in Monaco, Ferrari walked away with a small tactical victory.
The FIA informed teams about its engine performance calculations for the year to date, and the Scuderia is in line for maximum concession, as the team had hoped.
According to widespread reports, Ferrari’s engine — specifically its internal combustion engine — is more than four per cent down on power relative to the best motor. It entitles the team to a higher cost cap spend and two in-season upgrades.
Remarkably, however, Mercedes will be entitled to one upgrade, because the FIA’s metrics found that Red Bull Powertrains has the most powerful motor.
“That’s an eight-to-10-month project,” Hamilton cautioned. “That’s not something we can just do next week.”
But after a tough start to the year, it’s the sort of win Ferrari needed to keep the faith.