Italian GP 2026 Race Results: Antonelli Wins From 19th
Antonelli wins the Italian Grand Prix from 19th on the grid
He restarted twelfth after the red flag, made one more pit stop than the man he was chasing, and still had enough left to set the fastest lap of the race on the road to the flag.
On lap 29 at Monza, Kimi Antonelli was 14.288 seconds behind George Russell with 24 laps to run and one more pit stop already taken. He crossed the line 3.872 seconds in front. In between he took 0.70 seconds a lap out of his own team mate, every lap, for twenty laps in a row, then went past on lap 50 and set the fastest lap of the race on lap 53 anyway.
He had started nineteenth, second from last on a twenty car grid, after Mercedes went past their power unit allowance. Two more cars, Liam Lawson and Fernando Alonso, started from the pit lane behind him. It was his home race, four days after his twentieth birthday.
Caption: Top ten, 2026 Italian Grand Prix. Gaps measured from the official session timing data.
Behind them: Gabriel Bortoleto eleventh, Nico Hulkenberg twelfth, Carlos Sainz thirteenth, Lawson fourteenth, Oliver Bearman fifteenth, then Esteban Ocon, Alexander Albon and Sergio Perez a lap down and Valtteri Bottas two laps down. Lance Stroll retired on lap 27, Alonso on lap 23, Charles Leclerc on lap 2.
Leclerc's crash rewrote the race before it started
Gasly led the first lap from pole, his first, and it lasted exactly one lap. Russell was through by lap 2. Behind them Verstappen had already passed Leclerc, and with Oscar Piastri lining up the same move Leclerc spun at Parabolica and hit the tyre barrier hard. He was unhurt. The car was not.
Race control put out double yellows in the last two sectors, deployed the safety car, and then suspended the race. The stewards had already noted a Turn 2 incident between Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton on lap 2, and they cleared it with no further investigation while the cars sat in the pit lane.
That single event decided the next fifty laps, because a red flag on lap 3 means every car on track gets a free tyre change and a standing restart.
The red flag split the field into two strategies
Twenty one cars took new tyres during the suspension. Most of them fitted the hard and intended to run it to the flag, which is exactly what they did. Four fitted the medium: Antonelli, Hamilton, Yuki Tsunoda and Bortoleto. That was the whole race.
Driver
Opening 3 laps
After the red flag
Stops
Russell
Medium
Hard, laps 4-53
1
Norris
Medium
Hard, laps 4-53
1
Gasly
Medium
Hard, laps 4-53
1
Hamilton
Soft
Medium, laps 4-53
1
Verstappen
Soft
Medium to 28, then hard
2
Antonelli
Hard
Medium to 28, then medium
2
DriverRussell
Opening 3 lapsMedium
After the red flagHard, laps 4-53
Stops1
DriverNorris
Opening 3 lapsMedium
After the red flagHard, laps 4-53
Stops1
DriverGasly
Opening 3 lapsMedium
After the red flagHard, laps 4-53
Stops1
DriverHamilton
Opening 3 lapsSoft
After the red flagMedium, laps 4-53
Stops1
DriverVerstappen
Opening 3 lapsSoft
After the red flagMedium to 28, then hard
Stops2
DriverAntonelli
Opening 3 lapsHard
After the red flagMedium to 28, then medium
Stops2
Caption: How the front runners used the free change. Antonelli is the only driver who took a second set of the same compound.
The restart itself was messy. Tsunoda lined up in the wrong half of his grid box, race control called an extra formation lap, and the field went again from a standing start on lap 6.
Antonelli's second stop was the race
He restarted twelfth in the resumption order and was sixth by lap 7. By lap 13 he was third, by lap 16 second, and on lap 18 he led the Italian Grand Prix. He held it for five laps until the tyre offset began to tell and Russell came back past on lap 23.
Then Mercedes did the thing that won it. A virtual safety car came out on lap 28 for marshals at Turn 1, and Antonelli pitted under it, as did Verstappen. Measured against Russell, who stayed out, the stop cost Antonelli 12.658 seconds: he was 0.565s behind his team mate on lap 27 and 13.223s behind on lap 30. Verstappen's cost 12.987s. A stop taken at racing speed at Monza costs roughly twice that. Antonelli came out sixth with a second set of mediums and 25 laps to use them.
One caveat on that comparison, because it is the kind of number that gets quoted loosely. Five cars had already pitted on lap 27, one lap before the virtual safety car, so their out laps were neutralised too. That makes this race a poor place to measure the general saving a virtual safety car stop gives you. The 12.658s is solid because Russell is a clean control: same team, same car, on track throughout.
Here is what those tyres were worth. Mean lap time from lap 30 to lap 52, in and out laps removed:
Driver
Compound
Mean lap
Antonelli
Medium
1:24.663
Verstappen
Hard
1:25.192
Russell
Hard
1:25.366
Norris
Hard
1:25.522
Piastri
Hard
1:25.780
Gasly
Hard
1:25.815
Hamilton
Medium
1:25.927
Colapinto
Hard
1:25.932
Lindblad
Hard
1:26.310
Bortoleto
Medium
1:26.624
DriverAntonelli
CompoundMedium
Mean lap1:24.663
DriverVerstappen
CompoundHard
Mean lap1:25.192
DriverRussell
CompoundHard
Mean lap1:25.366
DriverNorris
CompoundHard
Mean lap1:25.522
DriverPiastri
CompoundHard
Mean lap1:25.780
DriverGasly
CompoundHard
Mean lap1:25.815
DriverHamilton
CompoundMedium
Mean lap1:25.927
DriverColapinto
CompoundHard
Mean lap1:25.932
DriverLindblad
CompoundHard
Mean lap1:26.310
DriverBortoleto
CompoundMedium
Mean lap1:26.624
Caption: Average race pace over the final stint. Antonelli was 0.529s a lap clear of the next car and 0.703s clear of Russell.
Seven tenths a lap over the twenty laps he had left is fourteen seconds, and fourteen seconds was exactly the gap. The arithmetic was finished long before the overtake was.
Note what the table does not say. Hamilton was on the same medium tyre and averaged 1:25.927, more than a second slower. The tyre was the opportunity. It was not the reason.
The last five laps
The gap fell in an almost straight line: 14.288 on lap 29, 9.756 by lap 35, 4.716 by lap 43, 0.249 by lap 48. Antonelli had a look on lap 49 and it did not work, and the gap went back out to 0.856. He got it done on lap 50 and was 1.226 seconds clear by the end of that lap.
Russell had no answer left. His hards were fifty laps old. Antonelli's mediums were twenty two, and he finished the race with a 1:23.504 on the final lap, the fastest of the afternoon. Eight of the ten fastest laps of the race were his.
Laps led: Russell 40, Antonelli 9, Verstappen 3, Gasly 1.
Turn 1 kept taking lap times away
Twenty one lap times were deleted for track limits during the race, and fourteen of them were at Turn 1. It caught almost everyone: Albon three times, then Hulkenberg, Norris, Hamilton, Stroll, Sainz, Colapinto and Antonelli twice each, and Russell, Verstappen, Perez and Bottas once. Qualifying had produced sixteen deletions with ten at Turn 1, so the pattern held all weekend.
The first chicane at Monza is one of the hardest braking zones in Formula 1 and the run off invites you to keep going. If you want the mechanics of why drivers keep losing time there, we wrote about track limits separately.
One result may still move
Tsunoda finished tenth and was placed under investigation after the race for the starting procedure infringement at the restart. A drive through penalty issued after the flag converts to 30 seconds, and 30 seconds would drop him from tenth to fourteenth and take his championship point with it. Nothing above assumes that outcome. The classification in this article is the one published at the flag.
Lawson and Hulkenberg were also investigated for a Turn 4 incident on lap 14, which ended with a black and white flag for Lawson rather than a penalty. Russell was investigated for a yellow flag infringement on lap 33 and cleared on lap 40.
What the radio caught
Gasly's pole lap the day before was the sound of the weekend. His engineer got the first word in.
That is Alpine's first pole in their current form, taken by a driver who beat Russell to it by 0.060s. Twenty four hours later he finished seventh, which is roughly what the car was worth on a Sunday.
The full qualifying channel is worth a listen, because Verstappen's assessment of his own car is not printable and Lawson's is not either.
Every decision in this article started life as an FIA document: the Leclerc and Hamilton incident, the Lawson black and white flag, the Tsunoda investigation. Most fans never see them, because they are published as PDFs on a page nobody bookmarks.
The Formula Dream app collects every FIA document from every session as it is released, alongside a weekend Timeline that puts the news, the documents, the results and the session data in the order they actually happened. During a session it also carries live timing, race control messages and driver radio with a transcript, so you are reading the stewards' decision while the commentary is still guessing.
