Monaco Grand Prix briefing: Track breaks up, top drivers bow out, Kimi Antonelli wins fifth straight
MONACO – Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli won Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix, claiming his fifth win in a row and extending his lead at the top of the drivers’ championship.
The 19-year-old became the youngest driver to win at Monaco, eclipsing the record set by Lewis Hamilton in 2008 by more than three years.
A pair of late safety cars and a red flag threatened to spoil what had been a dominant afternoon for the Italian, though he was able to survive the restarts and come out on top in what was a real race of attrition.
Though he was unable to provide a real change to Antonelli for much of the race, Lewis Hamilton made it back-to-back second-place finishes. Alpine’s Pierre Gasly crossed the line in third but dropped to seventh after a pair of five-second penalties, handing the final podium spot to Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar, who remains under investigation for a red flag infringement.
Max Verstappen started the race just behind polesitter Antonelli, though the four-time world champion saw his chances at a first victory of the season disappear during the start procedure when he was slow to get off the grid, tumbling to the back of the pack.
The Dutchman reported that he had no power and retired from the race after the first lap due to an engine issue.
It was a nightmare race for George Russell, who saw the gap between himself and Antonelli in the championship grow to 68 points and drop to third in the standings, behind Hamilton. The 28-year-old found no way past Hadjar for over 30 laps and, like five other drivers, was hit with a five-second time penalty for speeding in the pit lane.
However, Russell failed to serve his penalty after the first safety car, with Mercedes servicing the car without waiting the required five seconds, and he was given a drive-through penalty, dropping him.
Charles Leclerc was the sixth of seven retirements at his home grand prix, hitting the wall at the final corner after running over a piece of the track that appeared to have broken up, prompting a red flag.
Our experts, Luke Smith and Madeline Coleman, break down the action in Monaco.
Kimi Antonelli looks like a champion
Kimi Antonelli has driven all year like someone far beyond his 19 years and not even 30 F1 races. But his dominance in Monaco proved he is more than ready to win this world championship.
Antonelli’s pole lap on Saturday was, in his own words, “magic.” And the same word can easily be used to describe his stunning win on Sunday.
Yes, Verstappen’s failure to get off the line removed one threat, but the Ferraris behind never stood a chance. The numbers advantage many nothing. Antonelli was simply too quick to let the Italian team even try some strategic shenanigans at the front.
Even with the race under control, Antonelli didn’t slow down. His pace remained metronomic and blisteringly quick throughout – it was like watching a great in their prime.
Luck hasn’t been on Russell’s side at points this year, but Monaco was Antonelli’s weekend. The gulf in performance was no clearer than when Antonelli lapped his teammate, running fourth, with more than 20 laps to go.
Antonelli’s 66-point margin at the top of the world championship — more than two race wins, and now with Hamilton in second place — is significant, inflated thanks to Russell’s penalty again. But putting all numbers aside, it’s Antonelli’s level of performance that makes the title look well within his grasp.
To win in Monaco takes every ounce of a driver’s skill. Winning like this in Monaco? That’s the surest sign we are watching a champion in the making.
Luke Smith
Interesting racing remains an existential issue at Monaco (Steven Tee / Getty Images)
Monaco is still a racing snooze
There were questions leading into the Monaco Grand Prix about whether the regulation changes could open up more overtaking opportunities come race day. The layout of the track is quite tight, as the cars navigate through the streets of the principality, and the cars are heavier and larger than the early years of the F1 world championship.
The cars are lighter and smaller compared to last season, and active aerodynamics were disabled, specifically straight mode. The decision was made for safety reasons, given how the layout is quite twisty with very few straights. But this season has seen plenty of yo-yo racing, thanks to the new overtake mode.
But the drivers expressed caution around it. Antonelli said Saturday, “I think very difficult still, unless I wait for one second for the light, or two seconds, or you do a big mistake. I think it’s very difficult.”
Verstappen pointed towards the lower categories, Formula 2 and Formula 3, and how those drivers struggled with overtaking too. He added, “It’s just a little bit the layout, the curvature of some corners, they don’t lend to even have a go because you can easily cover it off. So yeah, it’s hard.”
Sunday’s race showed that is still true. Besides the reliability issues and retirements of Lando Norris, Ollie Bearman, Valtteri Bottas, Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen, a majority of overtakes happened thanks to pit stops. There were some outlier cases, like Alex Albon letting Arvid Lindblad by or time penalties dropping them down the order (like the numerous drivers dinged for speeding in pit lane) or team games like the Williams drivers swapping positions.
But at the end of the day, Antonelli summarized it well on Saturday: “It’s still Monaco.” And maybe that’s okay.
The qualifying product on Saturday makes it one of the most thrilling sessions of the season, given the razor-thin margins of error. The sport has tried different mechanisms to spice up the grand prix, like the mandatory two-stop a couple years ago, but the magic is still in qualifying.
Madeline Coleman
Verstappen’s big step back
Verstappen’s season has been a bit of a rollercoaster, with the Dutchman seeming pleased with his car’s performance at times while not thrilled at others. After qualifying second for the Monaco GP on Saturday, he even admitted he was “quite a bit” surprised by Red Bull’s pace.
“I was confident that we would make some improvements heading into qualifying, but not to fight for pole, honestly,” he said Saturday. “When I jumped into the car, I was like, ‘OK, let’s try and recover a bit. Maybe top five, that was the target.’”
Considering that Sunday’s race is typically a procession in years past, given the tight confines of the layout and overtaking difficulties, Verstappen needed to nail the start and get past Antonelli, who notoriously has struggled to get off the line this season. If the Dutchman could either maintain position or get past the Mercedes at the start, he could’ve been staring down his first F1 win of the year.
But his race was over within a few seconds.
The four-time world champion moved a few meters at the start but didn’t make it far before his car seemed to stall. He pulled out of the way of the other drivers behind him. He said over the radio, “Yep, nice. Completely f— guys, what the f— man?”
Verstappen is slow away from P2 on the grid! 😳
Here’s how the race start unfolded in Monaco! 👇#F1 #MonacoGP pic.twitter.com/yxVElkRWoa
— Formula 1 (@F1) June 7, 2026
Once the rest of the grid passed him, Verstappen managed to start navigating around the track and asked what to do. His race engineer, GianPiero Lambiase, told him to “just bring it home.”
Verstappen pulled into the pits, and the team wheeled him back into the garage. As the rest of the grid kept zooming through the principality, he climbed out of his car, his day over.
He said in the media pen that his “formation lap already felt a bit off.” When it comes to the pre-start, there’s an RPM target (revolutions per minute) that the drivers have to find, and Verstappen said, “It was not going at all. It was just shooting up and down a lot, a bit weird. And then yeah, as soon as I dropped the clutch, that was it.”
He added, “The engine bogged down completely, and after that, the noise that I heard from the engine once I got some power back out of Turn 1 was very bad, so I immediately just lifted off and brought it home.”
Verstappen later commented on how he steered to the left “with the friction of the wheels at that speed,” given he didn’t have any power. “I was just praying that everyone would go right, but everyone luckily reacted very well.”
It was up to Isack Hadjar to bring home points, but it became clear that he was enduring engine issues. He said at one point that “something’s going to explode,” and the team worked to find a solution.
Madeline Coleman
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc reacts in the pits after retiring from the 2026 Monaco Grand Prix. (Yves Herman / POOL / AFP via Getty Images)
More home heartbreak for Leclerc
Going into the Monaco weekend, Ferrari was being talked up as a potential favorite in Monaco given the strength of its chassis. The team has traditionally fared well in Monaco, and with engine power — Mercedes’ big advantage — less decisive, the paddock sensed an opportunity.
It never arrived. As good as the Ferrari starts have been this year, Antonelli comfortably kept his advantage into the first corner before disappearing into the distance. It couldn’t’t get close.
Hamilton’s five-second time penalty for exceeding the pit lane speed limit by 0.1 km/h risked costing him second place to Leclerc, only for Ferrari to double stack its cars in the pits under the safety car. Hamilton served his penalty while Leclerc had to wait and watch behind, leaving the Monegasque to vent his frustration upon returning to the track.
It only got worse for Leclerc with his mistake on the restart, locking up and going straight into the wall — just past the section of broken-up track — to add another chapter to his story of heartbreak around Monaco. He’d struggled under braking all weekend, and fumed on the radio about them after crashing: “I’m not even going to take the blame.”
Hamilton got one last chance to try and challenge Antonelli on the standing restart after the red flag, but was never able to get close enough, leaving him to cross the line behind the Mercedes.
Second was really the best Ferrari could have hoped for in Monaco. But between the gap to Antonelli and Leclerc’s sorry end to the race, the team will hardly leave feeling satisfied with how this went.
Luke Smith
Race Results (provisional)
- Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes
- Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari
- Isack Hadjar, Red Bulls
- Oscar Piastri, McLaren
- Liam Lawson, Racing Bulls
- Arvid Lindblad, Racing Bulls
- Pierre Gasly, Alpine
- Alex Albon, Williams
- Esteban Ocon, Haas
- Sergio Pérez, Cadillac
- Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin
- Gabriel Bortoleto, Audi
- George Russell, Mercedes
- Nico Hülkenberg, Audi
- Franco Colapinto, Alpine
Added: OUT: Max Verstappen (Red Bull), Valtteri Bottas (Cadillac), Ollie Bearman (Haas), Lando Norris (McLaren), Lance Stroll (Aston Martin), Charles Leclerc (Ferrari), Carlos Sainz (Williams)