Kimi Antonelli took a dominant victory in the Monaco Grand Prix ahead of the Ferrari of Lewis Hamilton after a chaotic ending that featured two safety cars and a red flag.
The 19-year-old Italian’s fifth win in a row, in combination with a dire race for Mercedes team-mate George Russell, who finished 13th and out of the points, puts him in total control of the championship.
Antonelli leads Hamilton by 66 points, with Russell now down to third, two points further adrift.
Russell dropped to the back from third place because of a drive-through penalty that he had to serve when the field was compressed two laps after the restart.
Pierre Gasly finished third for Alpine, but was immediately dropped to seventh with a penalty for speeding in the pit lane.
That promoted Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar to the final podium position, ahead of McLaren’s Oscar Piastri on the occasion of the team’s 1,000th grand prix.
Antonelli kept his cool through two race starts – the initial one and the final one after the red flag – to hold the lead off the line for the first time this season and utterly dominate.
An absolute masterclass from Antonelli for his first Monaco win underlined his credentials as the likely world champion this year, even if there are scheduled to be 16 races remaining.
The talk before the race was whether Antonelli could for the first time this year keep his position off the grid.
In fact, he got away well, and instead it was Max Verstappen’s Red Bull alongside him who suffered an engine problem off the line and was passed by the entire field before retiring after limping around the first lap.
That left Hamilton chasing Antonelli but any sense of competition evaporated almost immediately.
The Mercedes was 2.9 seconds clear at the end of two laps and continued to build a lead of more than five seconds by the end of 10 laps.
He had to back off a little to manage overheating brakes for 10 laps but then was able to pull away again.
Antonelli was more than 20 seconds clear of Hamilton when the first safety car was called with 18 laps to go after Lance Stroll crashed his Aston Martin at the final corner.
But even though Antonelli missed the pit lane entry the first time around – asking his engineer whether to pit and being told too late that he should – he stopped the next time around and retained his lead.
Antonelli said: “It was one of those days where we had incredible pace. It was just coming all so natural. The car was feeling incredible and was just giving me the confidence to push.
“The job isn’t finished. It’s still a long season. We are going to keep pushing and keep raising the bar. The goal is to keep performing like this.” (BBC News)
