Kimi Antonelli Wins Italian Grand Prix with Stunning Drive from 19th

Kimi Antonelli turned a damage‑limitation Sunday into a statement drive, charging from 19th on the grid to win the Italian Grand Prix and tighten his grip on the world championship.

The Mercedes teenager, hit with an engine change penalty like several others, looked set for a long afternoon of recovery work. Instead, he produced his seventh – and arguably most ruthless – victory of the season, beating teammate George Russell and stretching his title lead to 66 points.

Antonelli’s late sting

For most of the race, this looked like Russell’s day. He controlled the pace at the front, managed his tyres, and ticked off the laps with the calm of a driver in command.

Then the safety car arrived.

A late neutralisation flipped the script, leaving Russell out on older rubber while Antonelli dived in for fresh tyres. It was the kind of call that decides championships. When the race went green, the outcome felt inevitable. Antonelli attacked, the grip advantage told, and the chequered flag fell for Mercedes’ rising star – another heavy blow in the intra-team fight that now looks increasingly one-sided.

Russell had reason to feel aggrieved. He had done almost everything right. But on a day of split-second calls, the title leader got the break and made it count.

Behind them, Max Verstappen salvaged third for Red Bull, a solid if unspectacular result on a day when the team’s attention kept drifting to the other side of the garage.

Lawson’s long afternoon

For Liam Lawson, this was the race that never quite became what it promised to be.

Red Bull’s decision to change his engine – a strategic “free hit” with Isack Hadjar still sidelined – dropped the New Zealander to the back and forced him into a weekend of recovery. He spent practice and qualifying chasing balance and rhythm. On Sunday, he was chasing the pack.

Starting from the pit lane at least kept him clear of the first‑lap chaos. Lawson threaded cleanly through the turn one chicane and picked off two cars immediately, climbing to 15th by lap three. The momentum was building.

Then Charles Leclerc hit the wall at turn 11. The Ferrari’s crash brought out a red flag and a long stoppage of more than half an hour. The reset offered Lawson another chance to climb, but his race unraveled almost as soon as it restarted.

Contact with Nico Hulkenberg into turn four forced Red Bull to pit him for a new front wing on lap 13. Any hope of a stealthy charge into the points vanished as he rejoined down in 21st, buried in traffic and with a mountain to climb.

The raw pace was there. It just had nowhere to go.

Chasing shadows

Lawson needed clear air and got the opposite. It took him until lap 20 to even catch the group ahead, but once he arrived, the fightback finally began.

He swept past both Cadillacs on track, then gained another spot when Fernando Alonso retired his Aston Martin, edging back up to 17th as the race approached halfway. It was honest, hard graft from a car and driver clearly quicker than the backmarkers.

A gap of more than 20 seconds to the next pack looked terminal. Then the race threw him a lifeline.

Lance Stroll’s Aston Martin stopped on lap 29, triggering a virtual safety car and compressing the field. The timing helped Lawson close the deficit, but not the tyre picture. Rivals used the interruption to pit for fresher rubber; Lawson stayed out and found himself locked into a long, punishing stint.

On worn tyres, he still fought. He reeled in the two Haas cars of Esteban Ocon and Ollie Bearman, picking them off to inch higher up the order. When Williams brought Alex Albon in for a late stop, Lawson gained another place.

He took the flag on tyres that had done 41 laps – a brutal stretch by any standard – at the end of a race that offered more evidence of his racecraft than his result could ever show. The points, though, stayed out of reach.

“It’s a shame. I think we would have come through.” The frustration was written all over his afternoon.

Mixed fortunes for Red Bull and Racing Bulls

While Lawson toiled in traffic, Verstappen kept Red Bull on the podium with third place, limiting damage on a day when Mercedes looked sharp and opportunistic.

Pierre Gasly, the surprise polesitter in the Alpine, slid backwards in stark contrast. The car that dazzled over a single lap on Saturday could not live with the pace over a full race distance, and he slipped to seventh by the flag.

Racing Bulls, running without Lawson, quietly delivered one of the more efficient performances of the day. Arvid Lindblad finished eighth, Yuki Tsunoda 10th, banking a valuable double points haul. It came with a warning, though: their cushion in the fight for fifth in the constructors’ championship shrank to 13 points.

Up front, Antonelli’s win and Russell’s second place gave Mercedes the perfect platform heading into the final European stop.

Madrid awaits

Next up is the inaugural Spanish Grand Prix in Madrid, the second leg of a double‑header that closes out the European season.

Lawson will hope for at least one more chance in the Red Bull as Hadjar continues his recovery, one more race to turn gritty damage‑limitation drives into something the points column actually recognises.

Antonelli arrives with momentum, Russell with a sense of injustice, and the rest of the grid with one question: how do you stop a teenager who can win from 19th on a day that was supposed to hurt him?