Formula 1: Kimi Antonelli wins Miami Grand Prix for 3rd straight victory of 2026

3 weeks ago 10

Kimi Antonelli scored his third straight Formula 1 win in the Miami Grand Prix on Sunday.

The 19-year-old got ahead of Lando Norris after each driver had pitted on lap 28. Antonelli, who pitted just before Norris, used his warmer tires to his advantage and snuck past Norris after the 2025 champion had exited the pits. Antonelli then cleared Max Verstappen — who had pitted much earlier because of a lap 1 spin — and was able to build a comfortable gap to Norris over the second half of the race.

Antonelli became the third driver behind Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher to win the first three pole positions of his career in successive fashion during qualifying on Saturday. And he’s now the only one of those three to convert each of the consecutive poles into wins.

After wins in China and Japan, Antonelli entered the race as the points leader. And thanks to Mercedes teammate George Russell’s sixth-place finish, Antonelli leads Russell by 20 points just four races into the 22-race season. The Miami Grand Prix was supposed to be the sixth race of the 2026 season, but the Bahrain Grand Prix and Saudi Arabian Grand Prix were both canceled because of the Iran war.

Norris’ McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri finished third after a pass of Charles Leclerc on the penultimate lap. Leclerc then spun on the final lap after Piastri passed him but somehow didn’t destroy the car.

However, Leclerc bumped the wall and fell from fourth to sixth in the final corners after he was passed by Antonelli’s teammate George Russell for fourth and Verstappen for fifth.

The race was unbothered by rain after the start time was moved up three hours to 1 p.m. ET on Saturday evening with the risk of thunderstorms arriving around the original start time of 4 p.m. ET.

Verstappen spins at the start, Gasly flips over

The opening laps of the race were chaotic as Verstappen spun from second just seconds after the race began. Verstappen’s car snapped loose after he had gone off the track but didn’t hit the wall and somehow no one else ran into him.

Verstappen fell to the back of the top 10 after the spin, and a few corners later, Franco Colapinto bumped into Lewis Hamilton. The contact damaged the side of Hamilton’s Ferrari, and he finished a distant seventh behind the top six.

Just a handful of laps later, Verstappen’s Red Bull teammate Isack Hadjar clipped the wall and broke the steering on his car. That resulted in Hadjar’s car diving headfirst into the wall.

That seemingly was set to bring out a safety car, but before the caution emerged, Liam Lawson made contact with Pierre Gasly in Turn 17. As Lawson was to the inside of Gasly, he locked the brakes and bumped Gasly’s left rear tire. That contact sent Gasly’s car into a rollover before it was wedged against the outside wall.

Mercedes is still the team to beat … but did McLaren close the gap?

Russell won the first race of the season before Antonelli’s three straight wins. It’s clear that Mercedes is the team the other 10 are chasing in 2026.

However, the Miami Grand Prix weekend showed that McLaren is the closest to catching Mercedes. Ferrari appeared to be the closest to Mercedes at the start of the season, but McLaren has emerged over the past two races as the biggest challenger.

Norris won Saturday’s sprint race after Piastri was second to Antonelli in Japan. McLaren is still in an early constructors standings hole after a disastrous weekend in China when both drivers were unable to start the race because of mechanical issues. But if there’s a team that’s going to chase down Mercedes on speed, it’s hard to bet against McLaren at the moment.

But will that happen? Mercedes has saved its first big in-season upgrades for the next race in Montreal on May 24 while most everyone else brought significant changes to their cars in Miami thanks to the unexpected break. If Mercedes’ upgrades result in immediate speed, it’s hard to see how anyone will challenge the team anytime soon.