No more naysayers, surely? How Monaco proved Antonelli's searing form wasn't just luck

If it had all looked relatively peachy for Ferrari after Friday's practice sessions in Monaco, it certainly wasn't the case for Mercedes at the close of FP2. Although the team had been able to erode away at Ferrari's advantage over the course of the Friday afternoon, Mercedes' W17 chassis did not cut its usual immovable, unstoppable figure around Monte-Carlo's Port Hercule.

The initial set-up for the weekend was perhaps too stiff, too wooden for Kimi Antonelli and George Russell to glide between the unforgiving and intimidating walls with ease, or to soak up the impact from the plethora of bumps and kerbs that characterise the Monegasque streets. Whatever the team did overnight, presumably through the usual medium of simulator work and the soul-searching stare at the data traces, proved to be just the ticket.

Mercedes had also been one of a handful of teams to spot the loophole presented by the lack of straight mode for this weekend. Without the use of active aero, the actuator housing was effectively a superfluous lump on the rear wing; the ingenuity of the aerodynamicists, however, noticed that it could fill the void with an array of winglets. While some took a more circumspect approach to the addition of Monaco-only winglets, Mercedes filled the space with a vine-like sprouting of 3D-printed winglets. In the grand scheme of things, it was only a tiny tweak, but F1 has often rewarded such attention to detail.

Ferrari were still pegged as the favourites, even when Antonelli put his new set-up into action and vaulted to the top of the final practice session of the weekend. The car could now do more than take a pensive nibble at the kerbs, instead attacking them at will, and allowed the drivers to feel much more settled on the bumps - or at least, it proved thus for Antonelli by the time the Italian tucked into qualifying.

Even over Antonelli's final qualifying effort, the one that concluded with a 0.043s advantage over Max Verstappen's excellent effort late on in Q3, Mercedes lacked a smidgen of pace to Red Bull in the first and third sectors, and to Ferrari in the middle sector. Verstappen's problem was that he shipped two tenths to Antonelli in the middle sector, as the Red Bull was a more difficult customer to coax through the stretch between the Mirabeau entry and the exit of Tabac. Antonelli wasn't the fastest in any of the sectors, but he stitched them all together with a refined lap that demonstrated his class behind the wheel.

If people hadn't already sat up and taken notice of the Bologna-born racer's nascent brilliance by now, then his pole lap certainly demanded attention from the sceptics out there. It wasn't just that he'd snatched a pole position away from Verstappen or beaten the Ferrari duo, but it was that he'd put four-tenths over Russell in 2026's most important qualifying session of the year.

Antonelli led every lap in Monaco to clinch his fifth-straight F1 win

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There were a few who felt that Antonelli had been lucky in comparison to Russell; the Briton endured issues in qualifying across both the China and Japan weekends, was exposed to the Miami kryptonite, and then ground to a halt in Montreal after his power unit gave up the ghost. In Monaco, there was nothing that Russell or his supporters could cling to as a tenuous explanation for his arrears: Antonelli far and away was the better driver.

"I've matured a lot," Antonelli reflected after a breathless end to Monaco's 2026 encounter. "I feel like last year was a massive learning, especially in the bad moments. And despite how bad the bad moments were, I think being able to come away and to reset and actually being able to be back at the good performance was really important for me.

"That made me grow and also my mindset changed a lot compared to last year. And yeah, just not worrying about what happened last year and just trying to focus in and stay as present as possible."

Despite Mercedes' best efforts to slow Antonelli down, he did not relent. Perhaps Ayrton Senna's famous 1988 crash at Portier was a cautionary tale; the best way to maintain focus in Monaco is to keep the car going at full pelt

If there were any naysayers left in the crowd, Antonelli's race performance was a demonstration in just how far he's come - even over the season. Remember the nervy wobble in China, as he slipped off the road at Turn 14 with a few laps to go? There was never a moment over Monaco's 78 laps, turgid or chaotic, that Antonelli's lead looked in doubt.

When Verstappen's power unit decided on the start line that it didn't much fancy being thrown around for 78 laps, the tantalising hopes of a race-long duel between the pair were immediately quelled. The Red Bull was slow off the line with the first release of the clutch, and barely broke out of a spluttering crawl - testing the reflexes of those behind as they evaded the Dutchman's recalcitrant machinery. The identity of Antonelli's pursuer changed within that split second as the mantle fell to Lewis Hamilton - but by this stage in the weekend, Ferrari's out-of-the-box pace had simply evaporated.

The only times that Hamilton made inroads into Antonelli's lead was when the Italian squared up to the early traffic; the early stoppers were a lap down as soon as the 10th tour, but the gap was restored once it was the seven-time champion's turn to pick his way through the backmarkers. And, despite Mercedes' best efforts to slow Antonelli down, he did not relent. Perhaps Ayrton Senna's famous 1988 crash at Portier, a product of his decision to back off and subsequent loss of concentration, was a cautionary tale; the best way to maintain focus in Monaco is, often, to keep the car going at full pelt. 

Calm waters: Antonelli was in cruise control throughout

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That's evident in Antonelli's lap times versus those of Hamilton, which we've logged below between the second lap and prior to Stroll's lap 60 crash.

Antonelli vs Hamilton, lap 2-59 times

Note: * denotes Hamilton's stop on lap 29, ** denotes Antonelli's stop on lap 37.

As can be seen between lap 10 and 16, Hamilton inched closer by about 0.2s per lap as the two cleared traffic, which was evidently much more of an arduous task for Antonelli being first on the scene. But, once normal service had resumed by around lap 19, the difference between the two was stark and, at times, over a second per lap quicker. 

Once Hamilton pitted on lap 28, his laps on fresh hard tyres started to get a little quicker but, at this point, Antonelli was starting to face traffic once more while Hamilton had clean air ahead, so it's only worth looking at the deltas once Antonelli had conducted his own stop for the hard tyre on lap 37. Again, the surplus in pace is evident here, and only continued to escalate through the stint as the fuel burned off.

In normal circumstances, that would have been it; Hamilton was running almost half a minute behind the leader, and seeking to preserve his own second place over team-mate Charles Leclerc through a pitlane speeding penalty: a number of drivers had been pinged for being 0.1km/h over the 60km/h limit, and a five-second encumbrance loomed over their race results. Lance Stroll's shunt at the Antony Noghes corner changed the complexion of the race, not offering Hamilton the chance to serve his penalty pain-free, but also to get back on terms with Antonelli for the eventual restart once the safety car had compressed the order.

Antonelli missed the opportunity to take a safety car stop at the first opportunity, but his lead was so expansive at this point that he wasn't going to lose any ground by switching to softs a lap later than the Ferraris. In the meantime, Ferrari had gamely asked Leclerc to slow it down under the watch of the yellow flags, giving Hamilton enough time to serve his penalty and perform the pitlane double stack. The problem was that catching Antonelli under a rolling restart was going to be an incredibly tough ask - but Hamilton's chances were upgraded once again when Leclerc hit the wall at the same place as Stroll moments before the race resumed on the 66th lap.

This time, the red flag was shown; newly laid tarmac between the final two corners had begun to break up, coinciding with the two crashes. Yet, both drivers maintained that this was purely coincidental; Stroll explained that he had an engine braking problem and that his car pushed forward while on the brakes, while Leclerc angrily lamented his own braking issue, visibly furious when addressing his team on his inglorious return to the pitlane. Regardless, one is used to dealing with potholes on underfunded British roads, not the pristine billionaires' paradise of Monaco.

Hamilton tried to find a way past Antonelli on the restart, but couldn't flex Ferrari's start skills

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When a standing start was declared, it presented internal conflict to those watching: the idea of watching Antonelli and Hamilton battle into Turn 1 ahead of an eight-lap final shoot-out was compelling, but it would be cruel should Antonelli lose the lead in those circumstances. Ferrari's start-line prowess certainly threatened to put Antonelli's lead under scrutiny but, like many yacht owners traversing the French Riviera in choppy waters, the championship leader weathered the storm perfectly.

Mercedes' ropey approach to starts appears to have been ironed out. The Mercedes duo no longer concede positions off the line, like it had in the early rounds; great progress was made ahead of Montreal, although Lando Norris' better start on the intermediate tyre in the previous round had masked this somewhat.

"I was frustrated [by the red flag], because Lewis was starting next to me this time and knowing how well they start, I was like...well, I cannot say, because I'm going to say a bad word!" Antonelli chucked in the wake of the race. "But I was like, 'oh man.' Luckily the start went okay. Also, he had a lot of wheel spin, so that also made my life a little bit easier into turn one. But yeah, it was not easy to refocus after that, after the red flag. Canada was a big step forward on that side. There's still work to do, I think the first start today was the better one, the second start was still not amazing, but definitely a good step forwards."

"He's only 19. So just imagine what the future holds for him. But I'm going to do my best to try and chase him down for the rest of the year" Lewis Hamilton on Kimi Antonelli

Indeed, Antonelli had been able to resist a late assault from Hamilton into Sainte-Devote, and immediately resumed his rhythm from prior to the safety car, concluding perhaps his most emphatic victory in Formula 1 yet. 

"I was thinking about winning," Hamilton mused. "That was an opportunity, but 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 catapult me into the lead, unfortunately.

"And then as we got going and I just got to see him pull away that the performance they have, it's next level."

It demonstrated the steeliness that Antonelli has been able to develop so far this season and, while the odd flap might play out over the radio, the trust he has in engineer Pete Bonnington has been the panacea for occasional moments of getting flustered. 'Bono' must take plenty of credit for his role in moulding the teenager from an incredibly raw talent into a driver who can now string together a sequence of victories. 

The student becomes the master? Hamilton congratulates his Mercedes successor

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Hamilton, through his own 12-year tenure at Mercedes, knows exactly how much of a galvanising force that Bonnington can be for a young driver. And, of course, he saw Antonelli's emergence up close when the then-F2 driver was handpicked as his successor, offering support despite moving to pastures new in 2025. 

Since Russell scored no points following a drive-through penalty for failing to complete his five-second pitlane speeding punishment at his second stop, Hamilton now sits between the Mercedes pair in the drivers' championship. He might not necessarily be hopeful of closing down the 66-point gap to Antonelli but, for the first time in years, he's got the bit between his teeth.

"He's doing a phenomenal job," Hamilton said of Antonelli. "He's got an amazing team around him with Bono, with Toto [Wolff] and the whole team. And I'm really, really happy to see them doing what they do best.

"And then for him in this moment to be delivering on the level that he's delivering at, it's awesome to see. And it just encourages me to want to level up. And I think it encourages everybody wanting to level up. And he's only 19. So just imagine what the future holds for him. But I'm going to do my best to try and chase him down for the rest of the year."

Can anyone catch Antonelli has the 2026 season hits its stride?

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