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Kimi Antonelli has ended a 60-year-wait for an Italian to be crowned as the winner of the Italian Grand Prix as he etched absolute history at the at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza on September 6, Sunday. Antonelli has become the first Italian to achieve the feat since Ludovico Scarfiotti, who accomplished it in the year 1966. He notably began the race from 19th as his Merecedes teammate and closest rival George Russell copped a massive blow.
George Russell leads after Italian Grand Prix 2026 restarts
Russell, who had led a re-start after Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc crashed heavily at the end of lap two, finished second after being hunted down by his teammate with Max Verstappen third for Red Bull. The Briton had hoped to slash Antonelli’s 59-point lead after the Italian took an engine penalty and started on the back row of the grid but instead ended up 66 adrift after 13 rounds.
The most eventful occurrence happened in the initial part of the race itself as Charles Leclerc suffered a massive crash as his vehicle collided dangerously at Parabolica but fortunately he escaped any serious injury. The 28-year-old had still expressed concerns about his eyesight as he told RacingNews365 the below:
“It was just my vision a little bit at first; the right eye was not showing me great vision. But now it’s all good. That’s the thing I was most worried of getting out of the car; then, after that, everything was a bit of pain here and there, which is normal after a crash like this. So nothing more. I think from Lap 1 to Lap 2, I had a bit of a difference in power delivery. We’ll look into it, but I don’t want to comment too much before checking the data and confirm it.”
The Italian, who swapped the lead repeatedly with Russell before pitting during a virtual safety car period while Russell stayed out, cut an 8.9 second gap to less than a second in 10 laps but then appeared to have wasted his efforts. Trying to pass, Antonelli went into the gravel with four laps to go but still came back and took back the lead on lap 51 of 53 before pulling away.
“Our Italian hero. So deserved. That was a fantastic lap. I hated the last one, but it was fantastic,” commented Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff over the team radio after the flag.
Russell said he did not have the tyres to fight back.
“It was looking like a pretty strong race from us, and then I was just struggling with the tyres towards the end. Obviously, we did the whole race on that one hard tyre. I thought we were both going to stay out. I was surprised to see him pitting. In the end it was a roll of the dice both ways,” he said.
McLaren’s reigning champion Lando Norris finished fourth with teammate Oscar Piastri fifth. Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton was sixth, after starting fourth and clashing with Leclerc on the opening lap. Pierre Gasly, the initial pole sitter for Renault-owned Alpine, was seventh with Racing Bulls’ rookie Arvid Lindblad eighth and Alpine’s Franco Colapinto ninth. Racing Bulls’ stand-in Yuki Tsunoda completed the scoring positions in 10th.
(With inputs from Reuters)
