A maiden Grand Prix win for Andrea Kimi Antonelli at 19 years and 164 days. Pole, fastest lap, every lap led. The youngest race winner since Verstappen at Barcelona 2016 and only the eleventh driver in history to lead every lap of his first win.
How it played out
Antonelli took pole by 0.084s from George Russell , with Lewis Hamilton third on his Ferrari debut weekend at a circuit he’s won at six times. The sprint on Saturday went to Russell from Antonelli; the order flipped on Sunday and stayed that way.
The race had two stories at the front. The Mercedes pair pulled away on the opening stint and were never within a second of each other after lap 8 - Antonelli’s pace on the medium tyre was, by some margin, the fastest race running of any 2026 car so far. Hamilton drove a quiet, controlled third for Ferrari, his first podium in red. The result the move was made for.
Behind them, Charles Leclerc finished a frustrated fourth - faster than Hamilton on long runs but bottled up by Charles’ pace - and Oliver Bearman took an enormous P5 for Haas, his best result so far in F1.
The McLaren disaster
Lando Norris didn’t make the formation lap. A hydraulic fault in the pit lane left him stranded; the car was wheeled away before lights out. Oscar Piastri qualified fifth, dropped to ninth on lap one in contact with Pierre Gasly , and finished P19. McLaren scored zero points from a weekend that started with both cars in the top six on the grid. Two rounds in, the team has the worst points-per-grid ratio in the field.
The DNFs
- Max Verstappen - lap 22, MGU-K failure on the Red Bull, the second PU-related retirement in as many weekends
- Fernando Alonso - brakes again, lap 31
- Lance Stroll - lap 39, gearbox
The championship
Mercedes are level at the top of both championships. Red Bull are fourth in constructors with 12 points - 8 from Max Verstappen ‘s Melbourne recovery, 4 from Isack Hadjar ‘s P8 in Shanghai.
Japan in two weeks is the first high-speed aero test of the new regulations.