Piastri hit twice on first lap, Antonelli wins thanks to safety car luck<\/a><\/p>\nOscar Piastri and George Russell made contact with each other twice before the first corner, as Kimi Antonelli took full advantage of a fortunate safety car to win the Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mercedes have lived up to pre-season expectation that they would be the best team in 2026 but Russell, in his eighth season, was expected to win a maiden drivers’ championship.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But Antonelli, in just his second season, has been brilliant all season and has a massive lead in the championship.<\/p>\n
After Sunday’s Spanish Grand Prix, where Russell placed fifth and conceded a further 15 points to Antonelli, the British driver conceded his hopes of winning the title this year are all but gone.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We [Mercedes] are in a great position to win the constructors’ [championship]. Realistically, I’m not in the fight for the drivers’,” Russell said in Madrid.<\/p>\n
“That just allows me to focus on race-by-race, and try to focus on just getting some good results.”<\/p>\n
Sebastian Vettel became the youngest F1 world champion in 2010 when he claimed his maiden title at 23 years, 133 days.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Antonelli took the mantle as youngest driver to lead the championship earlier this year \u2014 but when asked if he could relax with an 81-point lead, the young Italian said he would not be taking his foot off the gas.<\/p>\n
“That’s exactly what I don’t want to do,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I want to keep pushing race by race, keep delivering and keep enjoying all the way.”<\/p>\n
F1 heads to Azerbaijan for a grand prix around the streets of Baku on Saturday, September 26.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kimi Antonelli is on the brink of becoming the youngest F1 champion in history, while his nearest rival…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":891178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,2055,21779,817,813,816,3875,460927,945,85],"class_list":["post-891177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-constructors-championship","tag-drivers-championship","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-george-russell","tag-kimi-antoenlli","tag-mercedes","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=891177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/891178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=891177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=891177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=891177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}