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Antonelli\u2019s lead over Russell expanded to 123 points [Michael Johnson\/Imagn Images\/Reuters]Wolff hails Antonelli\u2019s best race yet<\/p>\nPublished On 26 Oct 202626 Oct 2026<\/p>\n
Italian wunderkind Kimi Antonelli took another step toward his first Formula One championship by claiming his ninth race of the year at the United States Grand Prix in Austin, Texas.<\/p>\n
Antonelli, 20, capitalised on\u00a0his\u00a0pole position and sailed to a time of 1:35:16.650 at the Circuit of the Americas on Sunday, beating Charles Leclerc of Monaco by a comfortable 13.078 seconds.<\/p>\n
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With five races to go, Antonelli does not have the championship wrapped up quite yet, but his lead over Mercedes teammate George Russell of Great Britain expanded to 123 points.<\/p>\n
Russell must win the next race in Mexico City to remain in contention for the championship; otherwise, it will go to Antonelli, who has come to dominate the sport in his second F1 campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m aware [securing the championship] is close, but the mindset doesn\u2019t change,\u201d Antonelli said post-race. \u201cI want to finish the season on a high, to go into 2027 with high hopes.\u201d<\/p>\n
The strategy for Antonelli and Mercedes paid off. While others chose to pit twice during the 56-lap race, Antonelli held on until Lap 25 to pit and did not visit the pit lane again.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a perfect way to end the weekend; it was an incredible team effort, especially from strategy to believe in me and go for one stop,\u201d Antonelli said.<\/p>\n
Antonelli won five Grands Prix in a row early this season, one of which was the Miami Grand Prix. He is now 2-for-2 in the United States this season, with the Las Vegas Grand Prix still to come in November.<\/p>\n
Max Verstappen, the four-time F1 champion for Red Bull Racing, rounded out the podium 17.485 seconds behind Antonelli. After rattling off every championship from 2021 to 2024, Verstappen has been mathematically eliminated from this year\u2019s chase and will go two years without a world title.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur overall pace was not good enough, and the tyres we had available were not the right ones,\u201d Verstappen said. \u201cWe still managed to get on the podium, maybe a bit lucky with the [Virtual Safety Car] at the end.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Virtual Safety Car was deployed after Valtteri Bottas\u2019s Cadillac stopped on the track on Lap 52. It lasted until the penultimate lap, by which time nobody would be catching up to Antonelli.<\/p>\n
Mercedes grew its lead in the constructors\u2019 standings to 133 points over Ferrari \u2014 607 points to Ferrari\u2019s 474.<\/p>\n
Antonelli\u2019s lead over Russell expanded to 123 points [Michael Johnson\/Imagn Images\/Reuters]Wolff hails Antonelli\u2019s best race yet<\/p>\n
\u201cOn Kimi\u2019s side, the main headline is that for me [that\u2019s] the best race that he\u2019s delivered so far,\u201d Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said.<\/p>\n
\u201cGetting off the start with the inferior tyre and then controlling it [the race] at all times. The race of a champion who isn\u2019t the champion yet, but exceptional.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he\u2019s outperformed the car. His driving style just glues with the car.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wolff, reminded that Antonelli has had some special wins already this season, including at his home Italian Grand Prix<\/a> from the back of the grid as well as Monaco<\/a> and Spa<\/a>, accepted that sometimes he struggled to remember past races.<\/p>\n \u201cBoth of them were pretty good,\u201d he said in reference to Monza. \u201cBut the headline, this is the best, we can keep.\u201d<\/p>\n Antonelli was happy to agree with the boss.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it was one of the best, because of how we built up during the weekend,\u201d he told reporters.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd, you know, it was a great team effort as well today, especially with the strategy, believing in the one-stop. And, yeah, it was a really great team effort, and they all deserve this result today.<\/p>\n \u201cMonza, we clearly had the fastest car. We were just super quick, so of course it was incredibly special coming from the back,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n \u201cBut it was also a track where it was relatively easy to overtake, and we were so quick. But definitely, Monza was a super special one, and one that I will remember forever. But, you know, this one probably, in terms of execution, was better \u2026 the way we built the performance throughout the weekend was very good.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published On 26 Oct 202626 Oct 2026 Italian wunderkind Kimi Antonelli took another step toward his first Formula…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":946797,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,4996,12716,457,82,772,1690],"class_list":["post-946796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-italy","tag-motorsports","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-united-states","tag-us-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946796","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=946796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/946797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=946796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=946796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=946796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}