Kimi Antonelli won the United States Grand Prix from pole position on Sunday, finishing 13.078s ahead of Charles Leclerc with Max Verstappen third. It was his ninth win of the season, from 18 races, and it leaves him 123 points clear with 125 still to play for: a top-nine finish in Mexico City next weekend will make him world champion. Full race results.
One stop was enough
Antonelli started on mediums while the Red Bulls and Ferraris behind him chose softs, and he made the cleaner getaway, leading at the end of the first lap as Verstappen and Leclerc fought over second. Mercedes kept him out until the end of lap 24, well after Verstappen and the Ferraris had made their first stops, then fitted hards for the run to the flag. With his rivals committed to two stops, the single stop decided the race. A late Virtual Safety Car, called when Valtteri Bottas stopped his Cadillac, changed nothing.
"It was the result we needed," Antonelli said.
Leclerc's late charge
Leclerc took second on a soft-medium-medium strategy, passing Lando Norris and then Verstappen in his final stint with a handful of laps left. He also set the fastest lap of the race, a 1:37.976 on lap 42, and was voted Driver of the Day. "Unfortunately we came short of the victory which was our target," he said.
Verstappen's third place was his sixth consecutive podium, but it means Lewis Hamilton keeps his record at the Circuit of the Americas: five wins to Verstappen's four. Antonelli becomes the seventh different winner in the 14 Grands Prix held at COTA. Every winner in Austin.
Hamilton finished fourth, 1.030s behind Verstappen, with Norris fifth and Isack Hadjar sixth.
A difficult day for Russell
George Russell, Antonelli's nearest challenger, picked up a five-second penalty for leaving the track and gaining an advantage while fighting Oscar Piastri on the opening lap. Served at his pit stop, it dropped him behind both McLarens, and he finished eighth behind Piastri. Liam Lawson and Pierre Gasly completed the points.
Bottas, Franco Colapinto and Oliver Bearman were the retirements. Sergio Pérez finished 19th and last of the classified runners, a lap down.
The title in Mexico City
Antonelli now has 365 points to Russell's 242 and Hamilton's 241, with Verstappen on 236 and Leclerc on 233. He clinches the title in Mexico City if he finishes in the top nine, or if neither Russell nor Hamilton wins. Mercedes lead Ferrari by 133 points in the constructors' championship. The standings.
Born on 25 August 2006, Antonelli would be champion at 20 years and 68 days, more than three years younger than Sebastian Vettel, the youngest title winner so far at 23 in 2010. In 42 Grands Prix he has nine wins, 18 podiums and seven poles. His career stats.
I'm Alex Da Costa, a systems engineer with more than ten years of experience designing and maintaining data-heavy infrastructure. I've been watching Formula 1 since the 2005 season — Alonso's first championship, the year Schumacher's seven-title era finally cracked — and it's been an obsession ever since. Pit Lane F1 is what happens when that IT background meets a lifelong F1 habit. I started this site because the big outlets cover the headline result but rarely the data underneath: why a pit-stop window mattered, how a circuit's lap-record history actually compares, what every driver has done at every venue. So I built it. Race recaps for every Grand Prix since 1950, head-to-head career comparisons, telemetry replays for 2024 onward, and per-circuit deep dives — all from open data sources, fact-checked against multiple references, and written in plain language. The site is run independently. No team, driver, or commercial partner influences what gets published. If you spot a factual error or want to suggest a feature, the contact page is the fastest way to reach me.
