Kimi Antonelli 2026: Wins, Poles and Radio, Measured
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Kimi Antonelli's 2026 season, measured: eight wins, six poles and two races that got away
Kimi Antonelli has won eight of the fourteen Grands Prix of 2026 and leads the championship by 81 points at 20. Every race, where he started and finished, the two he lost, and what he said on the radio.
On lap 29 at Monza, Kimi Antonelli was 14.3 seconds behind his own team mate, having started nineteenth. He won by 3.9 seconds, at his home race, twelve days after his twentieth birthday.
That afternoon is the season in miniature. Antonelli has won eight of the fourteen Grands Prix of 2026, and he leads the championship on 292 points, 81 clear of George Russell, with nine rounds left. The two races he did not finish on the podium were not lost on pace. One was a power unit failure four laps from the end and the other was a broken wheel shield.
Every message he and his engineer exchanged on air this season, from the Canadian Grand Prix onward, is on
, with the audio and a transcript coloured by who is speaking. The best of it is below.
Every race of his 2026 season
The first seven rounds:
Round
Grand Prix
Started
Finished
1
Australian
2nd
2nd
2
Chinese
Pole
Won
3
Japanese
Pole
Won
4
Miami
Pole
Won
5
Canadian
2nd
Won
6
Monaco
Pole
Won
7
Barcelona
3rd
Retired, lap 62
Grand Prix results only. Sprint results are below.
The next seven:
Round
Grand Prix
Started
Finished
8
Austrian
4th
3rd
9
British
Pole
15th
10
Belgian
Pole
Won
11
Hungarian
7th
3rd
12
Dutch
3rd
2nd
13
Italian
19th
Won
14
Spanish (Madrid)
2nd
Won
Starting positions are the grid after penalties. At Monza that was 19th after Mercedes exceeded its power unit allowance.
The season in numbers
8 wins from 14 races. China, where he won for the first time (every Chinese Grand Prix), Japan, Miami, Canada, Monaco, Belgium, Italy and Spain.
6 pole positions, the most of anyone this season. Russell has four and Lando Norris three. Every pole time is in our 2026 pole times.
12 podiums from 14 races. The only two races without a podium are the two below.
5 of his 6 poles became wins. The exception was Silverstone.
3 wins from off pole: Canada from second, Madrid from second, and Monza from nineteenth.
292 points, 266 from Grands Prix and 26 from sprints, including a sprint win at Silverstone.
His sprints: fifth in China, sixth in Miami, third in Canada, first at Silverstone, fourth at Zandvoort.
The two races that got away
Barcelona: second place, four laps from the end
Antonelli had passed Russell for second one lap earlier when his car stopped on the exit of turn 5 on lap 62, with an apparent power unit problem. Lewis Hamilton won, his first Grand Prix victory for Ferrari.
The afternoon had not started comfortably. Before the race, he told the team the brakes felt wrong:
"Brakes feel quite bad already, quite long. Feels like air is in the system." The brakes were not what stopped him, but it was not a straightforward afternoon from the moment he left the garage.
Silverstone: from pole to fifteenth
He started on pole, lost the lead to Charles Leclerc at the start and was fighting back for the win after his pit stop when, on lap 41, he took the kerb at Copse hard. The left-front wheel shield failed and he could not turn the car properly. The radio caught him working it out in real time:
Two more pit stops followed, and then a five-second penalty for track limits on top. His reply to that is the most human message of his season:
"I didn't do it on purpose. Like, the car was broken." He was classified fifteenth. Leclerc won.
In every other race of the season he has finished on the podium.
The wins that said the most
Monza, from nineteenth. Mercedes went past its power unit allowance, so he started nineteenth at his home Grand Prix. With 24 laps left he was 14.3 seconds behind Russell. He took 0.70 seconds a lap out of him for twenty laps, passed him on lap 50 and set the fastest lap of the race on lap 53. The full story is in our Italian GP race report.
Kimi AntonelliMercedes · Italian Grand Prix 2026 · Race · 16:57:21 local
EngineerYes, Kimi! What a drive!
DriverThank you, thank you! Thank you guys, thank you for the support! Oh God!
Madrid, the first Grand Prix at the Madring. He started second and took the lead by pitting under a virtual safety car. On the radio afterwards he said the thing drivers rarely say out loud:
Kimi AntonelliMercedes · Spanish Grand Prix 2026 · Race · 16:39:44 local
Engineerbeautiful work Kimi absolute masterpiece good
Driverjob guys well
Engineerdone mate it took a lot of mental strength and i think you did the job yeah lucky for the safety car
Driverweird for the safety car sorry yeah i feel a bit bad for Lando but really strong race strong weekend let's keep pushing thank you everyone
Engineerlet's keep pushing yeah we're gonna keep pushing all the way
"I feel a bit bad for Lando, but really strong race, strong weekend." The race and the virtual safety car that decided it are in our Spanish GP race report.
The most heard driver on the radio
Antonelli is also the driver Formula 1 plays most. Across every session we recorded this season, from Canada onward, he has 85 broadcast messages, ahead of Lewis Hamilton on 77 and Russell on 74. That is roughly 13% of all the radio the world feed chose to air. We measured how that breaks down across the grid in whose radio Formula 1 actually plays.
Part of that is simply winning: the leader's radio gets played. Part of it is that he talks: he thanks the team, and when something breaks he describes it rather than going quiet.
What is left
Nine rounds remain, starting with Baku on 26 September. Our Azerbaijan GP preview has the session times and a pole forecast. An 81 point lead is more than three race wins, but not so large that one more Barcelona would not tighten it.
What this measures, and what it does not
Results and grid positions come from Formula 1's official timing data and were checked against the published championship standings after Madrid.
The radio count is what Formula 1 broadcast, not everything said. Our 2026 radio begins at the Canadian Grand Prix, so his first four wins are not in the count, and the world feed plays only a selection of what teams say.
Quotes are attributed from the archive's own speaker labels, checked against the words. Automatic transcripts garble names, so we have quoted only lines where the speaker and the words agree.
Frequently asked questions
How many races has Kimi Antonelli won in 2026?
Eight of the first fourteen: China, Japan, Miami, Canada, Monaco, Belgium, Italy and the Spanish Grand Prix in Madrid. He has also won one sprint, at Silverstone.
How many poles does Kimi Antonelli have in 2026?
Six, the most of any driver this season: China, Japan, Miami, Monaco, Silverstone and Spa. He converted five of them into wins.
Is Kimi Antonelli leading the 2026 F1 championship?
Yes. After the Spanish Grand Prix he has 292 points, 81 ahead of his Mercedes team mate George Russell, with nine rounds remaining.
How old is Kimi Antonelli?
He was born on 25 August 2006, so he turned 20 in August 2026, twelve days before winning the Italian Grand Prix at Monza.
Why did Kimi Antonelli retire in Barcelona?
His Mercedes stopped on the exit of turn 5 on lap 62 of 66 with an apparent power unit problem, one lap after he had passed George Russell for second.
Sources
Race and sprint results, grid positions and points: Formula 1 timing data via FastF1, checked against the championship standings published after the 2026 Spanish Grand Prix
Every radio message quoted: our own team radio archive
Hear the next one live
When the leader's car breaks, you hear it on the radio before anyone explains it on television.
The Formula Dream app plays live driver radio as it is broadcast, transcript beside the audio, and collects every FIA document of the weekend as the stewards publish it: the grid penalties, the track limits decisions and the power unit changes that put a championship leader nineteenth on the grid. There is also a live timing Dashboard, currently in beta.
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Nineteen Chinese Grands Prix have been held in Shanghai since 2004. Lewis Hamilton won six, pole won twelve, and in 2026 Kimi Antonelli took the first win of his career there, at 19, with Hamilton on the podium for Ferrari for the first time. Every winner, grid slot and safety car, measured.
