Kimi Antonelli arrived in Austin with a chance to take another major step towards the World Championship. He left the Circuit of The Americas needing just one more result to finish the job.
The Mercedes driver delivered one of his most complete weekends of the season at the United States Grand Prix, taking pole position and converting it into his ninth victory of 2026. More importantly, he now heads to Mexico City knowing that a ninth-place finish will be enough to secure his first Formula 1 World Championship, regardless of what happens behind him.
It was not necessarily a result Mercedes seemed capable of producing at the beginning of the weekend. Friday practice exposed some difficulties as the team worked to understand its upgraded 2026 car, but Antonelli transformed the picture when it mattered. A brilliant lap in Qualifying put him on pole, and from there, the 20-year-old rarely looked under threat.
A strong getaway allowed him to retain the lead into Turn 1 before an impressive opening stint on the medium tyre gave Mercedes the flexibility to make a one-stop strategy work. The italian driver controlled the race from the front and eventually crossed the line to secure Mercedes’ first victory at COTA since 2019.
His ninth win of the season also puts an extraordinary statistic into perspective: Antonelli has now won as many Formula 1 races this year as Charles Leclerc has in 189 career starts.
While # 12 on the grid controlled proceedings, Leclerc emerged as his closest challenger. Ferrari had looked strong from the beginning of the weekend after bringing upgrades to Austin, topping all three practice sessions before cooler temperatures complicated Leclerc’s final attempt in Q3 and left him fourth on the grid.
Sunday was a different story. The Monegasque produced one of his strongest races of the season, fighting his way into podium contention and completing one of the moves of the afternoon when he passed Max Verstappen through COTA’s high-speed esses. His pace on the hard tyre during the final stint confirmed Ferrari’s progress and second place gave him consecutive P2 finishes after Singapore.
Verstappen completed the podium despite spending much of the afternoon frustrated by problems (with the car and the team radio) and mistakes that prevented him from mounting a serious challenge for victory. The result officially ended any remaining mathematical possibility of a fifth consecutive World Championship, but his recent form remains impressive. Austin marked his sixth consecutive podium and his eighth straight appearance on the rostrum at COTA.
On the other side of the Mercedes garage, the contrast could hardly have been greater. George Russell kept his championship hopes mathematically alive with eighth place, but finished more than 54 seconds behind his team mate after struggling for pace throughout the race and trying to pass Oscar Piastri, which he did not accomplish. A five-second penalty for leaving the track and gaining an advantage only made an already difficult afternoon worse.
The equation heading into Mexico is now brutal for Russell. He needs to win while Antonelli finishes 10th or lower simply to extend the championship battle to Brazil. Anything better than P9 for the young Italian ends the conversation.
Further back, Liam Lawson continued to quietly build one of the strongest campaigns in the midfield. Ninth place in Austin marked his third consecutive points finish and his 13th of the season, taking his total to 77 points. That is already more than double what he scored last year and leaves him comfortably ninth in the Drivers’ Championship, 35 points ahead of Pierre Gasly and 39 ahead of his teammate, Arvid Lindblad.
Those performances are also proving valuable for Racing Bulls, who continue to strengthen their hold on fifth place in the Teams’ Championship. If Lawson maintains this level through the final five races, his case for a 2027 contract will be increasingly difficult to ignore.
Gasly took the final point despite carrying significant damage following contact with Ollie Bearman. The Alpine driver had narrowly missed Q3 but inherited a top-10 starting position following Arvid Lindblad’s grid penalty and managed to survive the incident to finish 10th, scoring for the first time since Monza.
For Bearman, what initially looked like an opportunity to score on Haas’ home soil quickly disappeared. After running 11th during the opening stages, he attacked Gasly for 10th but contact between the two damaged his car and earned him a 10-second penalty. The damage ultimately forced him to retire, his fourth DNF of the season.
Valtteri Bottas suffered a similarly frustrating afternoon. The Finn had shown competitive pace relative to Cadillac team mate Sergio Perez and at times appeared capable of fighting the Williams cars, but a suspected power unit problem forced him to stop on track. It became his eighth retirement of the year, leaving him still searching for his first points of 2026 with only five races remaining.
Franco Colapinto’s difficult run continued as well. After being squeezed between two cars on the approach to Turn 1, the Alpine suffered major damage to the floor and sidepod, forcing the Argentinian into retirement. It was his third DNF in four races after previously finishing every Grand Prix he had started for the team.
Perhaps the biggest concern coming out of Austin, however, belongs to McLaren.
The reigning World Champions continue to show flashes of performance when the car operates in the right window, but finding that window consistently has become increasingly difficult. Lando Norris recovered from eighth on the grid to finish fifth with a well-executed one-stop strategy, however, the one-stop did cause him to stop fighting in the front and losing positions to Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton. Oscar Piastri could only manage seventh after defending himself from George Russell for a good portion of the race.
Those results were not enough to disguise the bigger problem. McLaren increasingly appears to have only the fourth-fastest package, and with Red Bull returning to competitive form, the team has now fallen to fourth in the Teams’ Championship, however, they both have 355 points arriving into the Mexico City Grand Prix.
Austin therefore produced two very different pictures of the final stretch of the 2026 season. For some teams, there are still questions to answer before the year ends. For Antonelli, there is now only one.
The 20-year-old heads to Mexico City with nine victories and the World Championship firmly within reach. Finish ninth or better at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, and Formula 1 will have a new World Champion in just his second season in the sport breaking the record of the youngest champion and also the first Italian Champion since 1953.
