Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli claimed his fifth win of the F1 2026 season on the Monaco Grand Prix.
Antonelli dominated from pole place on one other disastrous day for teammate George Russell, with Lewis Hamilton second for Ferrari and Isack Hadjar third for Pink Bull. Listed here are our conclusions from Monte Carlo…
Kimi Antonelli is so paying homage to Max Verstappen
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The best praise you could possibly pay Kimi Antonelli?
Had all of the automobiles been painted white in Monaco, you’ll have sworn that the one on the entrance was Max Verstappen within the Pink Bull.
So fast has been his rise at first of 2026 that we’re nonetheless very a lot within the means of studying about Antonelli.
In his battles with George Russell in Canada, as an illustration, we found that not solely can Kimi win races and win them nicely, however that he has a streetfighter facet too.
The one lingering doubt prior to now, together with his emotional response to his mid-2025 struggles nonetheless contemporary within the reminiscence, involved his temperament beneath stress.
These final remaining issues pale away over the course of this weekend in Monte Carlo.
His remaining Q3 lap, plucking pole place out of Verstappen’s grasp with a lap out of nowhere, was Complete Max: the coolness; the identical pure contact and really feel; the fluency and suppleness of his inputs in squeezing each final drop the automobile needed to give and not using a trace of turning into ragged.
After 5 race weekends of weirdness as the game adjusts to its new panorama, that pole lap was a comforting and much-needed reminder that, sure, there may be nonetheless pleasure – the type of pleasure that made individuals fall in love with Formulation 1 within the first place – to be discovered even with these loathsome 2026 cars.
Likewise within the race, Antonelli confronted these tough variables dreaded by all race leaders in Monaco – the security automobile, the restart, the pink flag, the ultimate standing begin – with barely a flicker.
At the very least a number of the credit score for Antonelli’s stillness in these high-pressure moments ought to go to his race engineer, Peter Bonnington, who’s placing all his years of expertise of successful championships with Lewis Hamilton to Kimi’s benefit, managing him to perfection over crew radio.
If Verstappen has benefited over the course of his profession from the knowledge of Jos, and Mark Webber performs a similar mentoring role to Oscar Piastri, it’s ‘Bono’ who acts as Antonelli’s guiding mild.
It has been notable through the years that Verstappen has enjoyed a warm relationship with Fernando Alonso.
Little doubt as a result of they recognise so many components of themselves – the power, the spirit, that very same aggressive ferocity, stressed ambition and old-school perspective – in one another.
From the exchanges between Max and Kimi to this point, you sense that Verstappen sees a little bit little bit of himself in Antonelli too.
Recreation recognises recreation, as they are saying.
It was round this time two years in the past that Verstappen was first significantly linked with a future with Mercedes earlier than it turned obvious that, no, Mercedes was truly rising a Mini Max of its personal, one other boy marvel about to come back alongside and alter every thing.
Within the early days of Verstappen’s success – the primary win in Barcelona, the acts of genius within the rain in Brazil – there was an inescapable sense of future, of F1 historical past being written reside and uncut, unmatched within the fashionable period.
The identical inevitability – the identical certainty – is alive in Antonelli.
Little marvel that Toto Wolff all the time appears to stare upon him with such awe and, more and more, with such satisfaction.
The prophecy was true.
George Russell will wrestle to seek out sympathy if he loses the F1 2026 title
If Lando Norris had been on the lookout for a shoulder to cry on when he missed out on the 2024 title, he wouldn’t have discovered it hooked up to George Russell.
On the night time Max Verstappen was topped world champion for the fourth time in Las Vegas, Russell may scarcely imagine that he and Pink Bull had acquired away with it.
“It’s about time any person gave him a correct struggle,” Russell mentioned after the race. “That’s my plan. That’s what I need to do.
“He’s a fierce competitor and Pink Bull are doing superb, however this championship in all probability ought to’ve gone right down to the wire.
“You possibly can argue that Max in all probability wasn’t the favorite at one level and but he wins it with races to go…”
The implication in Russell’s feedback was clear: if I had been introduced with the automobile and the chance Lando had this season, Verstappen wouldn’t have stood an opportunity.
It was the sort of brash and pompous interjection that has made individuals wrestle to heat to George through the years.
It’s one factor for drivers to assume that means, even to specific it privately.
However to truly say it in public? Loud and proud in entrance of a tv crew in the course of the paddock? It takes some nerve.
And the way is it understanding for Russell in 2026 now that he’s the one with the quickest automobile and a shot at a primary world championship?
Solely now could be he discovering out that it’s not really easy to deal with the stress and weight of expectation that comes with being title favorite.
Not that he’s the favorite for the title anymore.
Certainly, take a glimpse on the drivers’ standings after Monaco and also you’ll discover that Russell is now third in a two-horse race.
What started as a blip after his victory in Australia – a reliability situation in China qualifying, an ill-timed security automobile in Japan – has remarkably developed right into a full-blown disaster.
By some means Russell has discovered himself trying much more bereft of solutions than Norris at his lowest moments in 2025.
Irrespective of how grim it got for Lando, at the very least he all the time had the underlying tempo to maintain offering hope that he may salvage his season and eventually piece every thing collectively.
Russell?
Even when he had managed to win the final race in Canada, in some methods it might nonetheless have counted as a defeat given how onerous Kimi Antonelli pushed him on a so-called Russell circuit.
Even at a observe the place George was near unbeatable in 2025, even on the one place he may rely on to rediscover his confidence and his poise, nonetheless Kimi wouldn’t let him relaxation.
The way of Kimi’s fifth consecutive victory in Monaco appeared to verify what Canada had strongly steered: Antonelli has, after simply 30 grand prix appearances, already surpassed Russell.
He has grown at a sooner price than anybody may have probably imagined – least of all George himself, so clearly destabilised by a problem he merely didn’t see coming – and the battle to include Antonelli has already been misplaced.
Until he can discover a technique to management the chemical response lighting up the opposite facet of the Mercedes storage, quickly the title can be misplaced too.
And who is aware of?
When it’s misplaced, Norris would possibly wish to remind him of the world championship trophy he has sitting at dwelling.
The nice Lewis Hamilton thriller goes on
Is it the automobile or is it me?
By his personal admission, Lewis Hamilton has grappled with and agonised over that query for 4 years now.
Whether it is onerous sufficient to separate driver efficiency from the automobile in triumph – is it 60:40 in favour of the automobile? Or 75:25, maybe? – think about how troublesome it have to be in defeat.
Has Hamilton, now in his fifth decade, spent all the post-2021 interval in some type of irreversible, everlasting decline?
Or is the Lewis of previous – or at the very least one thing shut sufficient to resemble the Lewis of previous – nonetheless in there ready to be unlocked once more with the precise equipment?
The nice Lewis Hamilton thriller was solely ever going to be solved with the arrival of a very succesful, driveable automobile with loads of downforce.
So the SF-26, the primary automobile he can actually work with this facet of 2021, got here at an excellent time for him – simply as a rising variety of individuals have been writing him off for good.
And the proof thus far?
It’s been – easy methods to put this greatest? – tentatively encouraging.
His second place in Monaco, the place he measured up nicely to Charles Leclerc all through, marked the primary time in virtually two years that Hamilton has claimed consecutive podium finishes.
He’s passing the attention check, too, trying visibly extra relaxed on observe and in his environment – word how he christened his current race engineer Carlo Santi the ‘Italian Bono’ in Monaco – than at any stage because the solar began taking place on his Mercedes days.
Hamilton spoke after the race on Sunday of feeling as if he should “remind individuals who I’m” after spending so lengthy within the aggressive wilderness, but little question there’s a must jog his personal reminiscence too.
Slowly however absolutely, he’s regaining his power and his outcomes over the past two races counsel that he can be shut sufficient, typically sufficient to the entrance to have an opportunity of sneaking a victory or two in 2026.
However maintain on.
Was Hamilton actually nearly as good as he regarded in Monaco?
Or was he truly barely flattered by the issues of Leclerc, whose ongoing frustrations with the brakes – a carryover from Canada – virtually actually hid his true tempo this weekend?
The thriller goes on.
Isack Hadjar has the resilience different Pink Bull hopefuls have lacked
How do we all know that Isack Hadjar is fabricated from stronger stuff than Max Verstappen’s earlier Pink Bull teammates?
Look no additional than his response to his accident in FP1 in Monaco.
Regardless of the overall notion that he has made an achieved begin to life at Pink Bull in 2026, the previous couple of races have been a little bit troubling for him.
After a nondescript drive to twelfth at Suzuka, his tagging of the within barrier within the early laps in Miami was a horrible technique to exit a race.
And despite the fact that he recorded the most effective results of his quick profession as a Pink Bull driver in Canada, that was achieved with two separate time penalties that might have left him additional down the order on a traditional day through which the McLarens and George Russell all completed within the factors.
So quite a lot of have been fearing the worst on Friday when Hadjar went out and made one other mistake, plunging the nostril of his RB22 into the barrier on the exit of the Swimming Pool.
If this had been Pierre Gasly or Alex Albon, or Sergio Perez or Liam Lawson or Yuki Tsunoda, the second Pink Bull would virtually actually have sunk with out hint.
Such an early setback would have knocked the driving force’s confidence past restore and the inevitable meek Q1 exit – in a automobile able to significantly extra – would have adopted.
However this, it’s now more and more clear, isn’t Pierre Gasly. Or Alex Albon.
Or Sergio Perez or Liam Lawson or Yuki Tsunoda.
That is Isack Hadjar.
And responding to setbacks is solely what he does.
It’s what he’s been doing just about ever because the tears began flowing again in Melbourne final yr after his F1 debut ended on the formation lap.
And so a weekend that began with the potential of the highlight turning uncomfortably in the direction of him, on the time of yr Verstappen’s teammates have historically began to crack, ended with Hadjar celebrating his first podium in Pink Bull colors – an achievement three of his predecessors by no means managed.
The extra punches he takes, the stronger he turns into.
That resilience will serve him nicely.
Charles Leclerc’s feedback about Fred Vasseur felt pointed
It was Guenther Steiner who greatest summed up the fickle nature of Formulation 1 a few years in the past.
A lot was fabricated from Haas’s much-improved 2024 season beneath the brand new management of Ayao Komatsu after Steiner had departed the crew on the finish of the earlier yr.
But as Steiner identified on the time, just about all of the design work on that yr’s Haas was carried out whereas he was nonetheless in cost.
For all of the reward Komatsu obtained for making Haas a calmer, extra engineering-led and extra dignified place, it was finally beneath Steiner that the seed was sown for the crew’s leap in competitiveness.
Steiner’s feedback got here to thoughts in mild of Ferrari’s encouraging begin to the 2026 season as the strain that had constructed up over the course of final yr drained away.
Let’s think about for a second that Ferrari had succumbed to the needs of the extra emotional factions of the Italian media final season and parted methods with Fred Vasseur (who, for what it’s value, is certainly the most effective factor to occur to the crew in years).
Nearly actually, Vasseur’s substitute would now be thought to be the messiah for orchestrating Ferrari’s spectacular begin to the brand new guidelines cycle and bouncing again from a winless 2025.
And Fred?
Like pricey ol’ Guenther, together with his status in tatters he might need struggled to discover a senior function in F1 once more – actually one as engaging as crew principal of Ferrari.
Ethical of the story: reputations in F1 rise and fall with the competitiveness of the automobile.
So it was curious that Charles Leclerc made such an enormous deal in Monaco of the affect of Vasseur in his resolution to signal a brand new contract with Ferrari.
Leclerc successfully turned Thursday’s FIA press convention right into a Fred-a-thon, such was the emphasis he positioned on Vasseur’s significance to his ongoing dedication to the crew.
“Principally Fred,” he instructed PlanetF1.com and different media retailers when requested what evokes his religion in Ferrari. “I’m very on board together with his imaginative and prescient and I actually imagine in Fred.”
In reply to a different query, he mentioned: “I believe with Fred we’ve got an excellent relationship and I strongly imagine that he’s the person who will be capable to carry Ferrari again to the highest.”
Fred, Fred, Fred, Fred, Fred.
Because the weekend developed, it emerged that this had turn into a recurring theme of interviews given by Leclerc concerning his new contract.
It felt virtually rehearsed. Deliberate. Pointed.
Vasseur, after all, noticed off the preliminary uncertainty over his place final yr by signing a brand new multi-year contract of his personal.
But as anybody who has adopted Ferrari for any size of time is aware of, the subsequent disaster is barely ever simply across the nook.
When GianPiero Lambiase’s transfer to McLaren was introduced in April, rumours circulated that he had been lined up as the subsequent McLaren crew principal, with Andrea Stella attracting curiosity from Ferrari.
Unusually, few on the time appeared to cease to think about what all this would possibly imply for the present regime at Maranello.
PlanetF1.com understands {that a} transfer away from McLaren isn’t on the playing cards for Stella, whose function will stay unchanged when Lambiase ultimately arrives.
However as reported by this web site in April, it is believable that Lambiase is being positioned to interchange Stella when the function of crew principal subsequent turns into accessible, with sources indicating that GP may have been sold this scenario as a part of his transfer from Pink Bull.
Laurent Mekies’ remark on the Canadian Grand Prix that Lambiase is “going to be team principal” at McLaren felt just like the second this story moved past hearsay into one thing a lot nearer to an open secret.
So let’s say that Lambiase does take over at McLaren within the coming years and Stella does transfer on… the place precisely will that depart Vasseur?
If Ferrari does certainly turn into Stella’s subsequent vacation spot when his work at McLaren is finished, absolutely he won’t be heading to Maranello to work beneath Fred.
May it’s that, spooked by its woeful 2025, Ferrari has a plan able to spring into motion the subsequent time the crew suffers a lacklustre season or one other alarming dip?
In that context, Leclerc’s feedback in Monaco is perhaps seen as a message to Ferrari’s senior administration: I stay loyal to you for so long as you stay loyal to Fred.
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