![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/14-sunday-montecarlo-2026-900x600.jpg\")
Lewis Hamilton (No. 44) on track during the F1 Grand Prix of Monaco. CREDIT: Alastair Staley\/LAT Images<\/p>\nMercedes driver Kimi Antonelli scored his fifth-consecutive win of the 2026 F1 season with a convincing victory in the Monaco Grand Prix to take a commanding lead in the driver\u2019s championship.<\/p>\n
The Italian started from pole and led every lap in the tiny principality, cruising to an easy win to become the youngest-ever Monaco winner despite a couple of late restarts that threatened to ruin his day.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been an incredible weekend, incredible race. It was one of those days where we had so incredible pace and it was just coming all so natural and the car was feeling incredible and it just was giving me the confidence to push. It was a very enjoyable day,\u201d said Antonelli, who left Monaco with a 66-point lead in the driver\u2019s championship after six races. \u201cThe job\u2019s not finished. It\u2019s still a long season and we\u2019ve got to keep pushing, keep raising the bar. And the goal is to keep performing like this.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the end, Antonelli\u2019s 6.271-second margin of victory definitely gives the impression of a close race, but before the safety car neutralized the action late in the running, it looked like he\u2019d cross the line more than 30 seconds ahead of his nearest rival and lap everyone but the podium finishers.<\/p>\n
Instead, two late crashes in Turn 19 saw a safety car and a red flag tighten up the field before a final sprint to the finish.<\/p>\n
While they couldn\u2019t challenge Antonelli, both Ferraris continued their improved pace since an upgrade in Miami two races ago, although Charles Leclerc\u2019s race came to an abrupt end from third when he hit the wall in the last stages and brought out a red flag. Canadian Lance Stroll in the Aston Martin caused the safety car period with an earlier crash in the same spot.<\/p>\n
Lewis Hamilton (No. 44) on track during the F1 Grand Prix of Monaco. CREDIT: Alastair Staley\/LAT Images<\/p>\n
Leclerc\u2019s teammate Lewis Hamilton avoided trouble and delivered one of his best races in the scarlet car, coming home second and leapfrogging George Russell for second spot in the championship standings by two points, 90-88.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was thinking about winning. I was thinking about getting him [Antonelli] at the beginning \u2014 unfortunately, we both basically got pretty much the same starts. I think I gained on him just a little bit and I was almost to his rear wheel, but not enough to pop me in the lead and then, as we got going, I just got to see him pull away,\u201d said Hamilton. \u201cI think we\u2019ve been progressing over the past months and can\u2019t quite keep up with [Mercedes] just yet \u2014 and it\u2019s probably going to take a lot of work for us to get to their level \u2014 but to get another second place is such a great feeling, especially in Monaco, under the trickiest conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hamilton moved into second as soon as the lights went out when Max Verstappen experienced a terminal failure immediately off the start from the front row and retired.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/7-sunday-montecarlo-2026-900x600.jpg\")
Isack Hadjar (No. 6) on track during the F1 Grand Prix of Monaco. CREDIT: Sam Bagnall\/Sutton Images<\/p>\n
With the No. 1 Red Bull Racing driver out, all eyes turned to Isack Hadjar, who did not disappoint. The young Frenchman drove a solid race to take his second-career podium despite having car problems throughout most of the race.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think very early, from I would say Lap 12, something like that, I started having driveability issues and it was just undriveable,\u201d he said. \u201cIn Monaco, especially here, it\u2019s not like you can allow yourself to skip using first gear, second gear, and this is where the problem was. It was very hard to drive. I was down on power at some point. Also on the final restart, on that start, still need to figure out our problems, but I kept pushing and we\u2019re here. I\u2019m happy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Russell struggled in qualifying and only started fifth, and things unraveled from there. Two penalties eventually led to his undoing as he failed to serve the sanctions in his pitstop as required and got slapped with a drive-thru penalty. He ended the day 12th.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s tough to take but I\u2019m not going to give up,\u201d said Russell. \u201cAcross the last two races, I\u2019ve effectively lost around 40 points. It\u2019s incredibly frustrating but the rest of the season can still look very different. We saw that last year and, in many seasons previous. It\u2019s unfortunate how things have played out so far but I\u2019m aiming to bounce back [in the next race] in Barcelona.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli scored his fifth-consecutive win of the 2026 F1 season with a convincing victory in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":723167,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,580,577,3028,25251,932,35099,82],"class_list":["post-723166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula-one","tag-formula1","tag-isack-hadjar","tag-kimi-antonelli","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-monaco-grand-prix","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=723166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/723167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=723166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=723166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=723166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}