Kimi Antonelli arrived in Mexico with the possibility of becoming World Champion. He left the Autódromo Hermanos Rodriguez having made Formula 1 history.
At 20 years and 68 days old, the Mercedes driver became the youngest World Champion the sport has ever seen, breaking Sebastian Vettel’s record and becoming the first Italian to win the Formula 1 Drivers’ Championship since 1953. And perhaps the most remarkable part is that he has done it in only his second season.
Antonelli joins Juan Manuel Fangio, Jacques Villeneuve and Lewis Hamilton among the drivers who became champions in their second Formula 1 season. He also wrapped up the title with four events still remaining, tied for the fourth-earliest championship clinch in F1 history.
His late move on Charles Leclerc for the final podium position felt like an appropriate way to finish the job. Even with the championship within reach, Antonelli was still willing to attack despite a lot of people thinking that he would “play it safe”. The result was enough to officially end the title fight and complete a season that has transformed him from one of Formula 1’s biggest prospects into its newest World Champion.
The significance of the achievement was reflected beyond the Mercedes garage. Sebastian Vettel, whose record Antonelli had just broken, even sent the Italian a congratulatory video. The podium at the Mexico City GP was incredibly emotional with Kimi Antonelli being carried in Hamilton´s and Verstappen shoulders and it only became more overwhelming when they played “Nessum Dorma” which reminds the current Champion of his late grand father.
For George Russell, however, the celebrations on the other side of the Mercedes garage will inevitably be difficult to digest. Losing a championship is one thing; losing it to your 20-year-old teammate in only his second season is another. Mexico also left Russell outside the top two in the standings, with Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton moving ahead of him. The championship may be decided, but Russell still has four weekends to recover positions and take the best possible finish from a season in which the internal Mercedes comparison has become impossible to ignore.
While Antonelli made history, Verstappen continued writing a very different comeback story.
The four-time World Champion took advantage of Ferrari’s opening-lap battle between Hamilton and Leclerc to move into second before Red Bull’s strategy helped put him into the lead. Once there, he did what Verstappen so often does: controlled the race and refused to give anyone an opportunity to take it back.
Hamilton applied pressure in the closing stages, but Verstappen held on to claim his sixth victory in Mexico City and his third win in four Grand Prix weekends. More significantly, he has scored 149 points across the last seven Grands Prix, more than any other driver over that period, and has now climbed to second in the championship.
Considering Verstappen managed only two podiums in the opening nine Grands Prix, his second half of the season has been an extraordinary turnaround.
Ferrari, meanwhile, will leave Mexico wondering how a weekend that offered so much turned into another missed opportunity.
Hamilton had produced one of the stories of Saturday by taking his first Grand Prix pole position as a Ferrari driver. At 41 years and 298 days, he also became the oldest Formula 1 polesitter since Mario Andretti at the 1982 Italian Grand Prix.
But the advantage disappeared almost immediately.
Hamilton and Leclerc fought each other for the lead on the opening lap, allowing Verstappen to benefit from their battle. Leclerc emerged ahead but later received a five-second penalty, eventually finishing fourth, while Hamilton had to settle for second.
For a team fighting to maximise every opportunity, the frustration will be that Ferrari appeared to have the machinery to win. Instead, Mexico became their third consecutive Grand Prix with a second-place finish. Fred Vasseur was understandably frustrated with how his drivers handled the opening stages, and Ferrari may need to ask whether the fight between its own cars cost the team a victory that was there for the taking.
Further down the field, Mexico produced one of the most unexpected point scorers of the entire season.
Ryo Hirakawa began the weekend expecting another FP1 appearance and ended it as a Formula 1 points scorer. Haas unexpectedly promoted the Japanese driver into Esteban Ocon’s seat after a disagreement between the Frenchman and the team resulted in Ocon’s departure.
With almost no preparation, Hirakawa qualified 19th and became, at 32 years and 239 days, the oldest F1 debutant since Andre Lotterer in 2014. He then kept himself out of trouble during the race and benefited from the penalties around him to be classified 10th, scoring a point on his Grand Prix debut.
Liam Lawson also made the most of a weekend that initially seemed determined to work against him. A clash with Verstappen in practice earned him a one-place grid penalty, before a technical infringement led to his disqualification from qualifying. New Power Unit components then meant starting from the pit lane.
From there, Lawson recovered all the way to seventh after post-race penalties were applied, securing his third seventh-place finish in four events. Doing it in front of a Mexican crowd that has hardly embraced him since the controversy surrounding Sergio Pérez’s former Red Bull seat only added another layer to his recovery drive.
For Pérez himself, the home crowd had plenty to cheer about even if the result ultimately gave them very little reward. Fans sang his name every time the Cadillac passed, and Pérez climbed as high as 13th while successfully holding off quicker cars. The Mexican driver was also celebrating his 300th GP start at home, however, a slow pit stop and a penalty for speeding in the pit lane destroyed his chances of converting that progress into Cadillac’s first Formula 1 point. Considering Pérez had been running ahead of Hirakawa, who eventually inherited 10th, the opportunity was very real.
Cadillac’s afternoon became more concerning when Valtteri Bottas suffered a failure and crashed heavily at Turn 1. The Finn escaped unharmed, but the incident raises uncomfortable questions for the new team about reliability and safety as its debut campaign continues.
Alpine experienced an entirely different kind of missed opportunity. Pierre Gasly and Franco Colapinto started ninth and 11th and initially appeared to have delivered the team’s first double-points result since Monza. Colapinto crossed the line eighth and Gasly 10th, with both moving up another position after Oscar Piastri received a penalty.
Then came penalties of their own.
Yellow-flag infringements for both Alpine drivers removed them from the top 10 entirely, leaving the team 35 points behind Racing Bulls in the battle for fifth in the Teams’ Championship. On a weekend when Alpine had the pace to make meaningful progress, they instead left Mexico empty-handed.
Piastri’s penalty only added to what has become an unexpectedly difficult season for the Australian. Mexico marked the first time in two years that he failed to reach Q3, curiously at the same circuit where that last happened in 2024.
He recovered into the top 10 during the race, but contact with Arvid Lindblad while fighting for seventh resulted in a penalty and ultimately pushed him out of the points. It was already the seventh event of 2026 in which Piastri has failed to score, and he has not stood on a podium since Miami in Round Four.
After what he achieved last season, the contrast is striking. Whatever the underlying reasons, Piastri has never appeared completely at ease with the MCL26, and Mexico did little to suggest that relationship is improving.
Aston Martin had even less opportunity to show what its car could do. Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll were both instructed to retire after the team detected abnormal pressure levels in their Power Unit systems, ending their races after only a couple of laps.
For Alonso, it was his seventh retirement of the season and, remarkably, his fifth consecutive DNF at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodriguez. Stroll’s numbers are even more dramatic: Mexico marked his 13th retirement of 2026, the highest number of DNFs by a driver in a single season since Rubens Barrichello in 1997.
Mexico ultimately became a weekend of extremes. Ferrari had the chance to win and let it slip away. Cadillac came close to a historic first point but instead left with reliability concerns. Piastri’s difficult year became even harder, while Verstappen’s late-season resurgence continued.
But all of those stories were inevitably overshadowed by one.
Twenty years and 68 days. Two seasons in Formula 1. And now, Kimi Antonelli is a Formula 1 World Champion.
Kimi Antonelli arrived in Mexico with the possibility of becoming World Champion. He left the Autódromo Hermanos Rodriguez having made Formula 1 history.
Mexico had his F1esta, Verstappen got his victory and Antonelli… the championship.
See you in Interlagos!
