Kimi Antonelli celebrates his Miami Grand Prix win Sunday. (Mercedes photo)

By Thomas Hughes, SWN Staff Writer

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (May 3, 2026) – Mercedes-AMG Petronas’ Kimi Antonelli is young. He’s also very good at the whole racing thing.

Antonelli – Formula One’s youngest-ever championship leader – dominated the latter stages of the Miami G.P., claiming his third victory of the 2026 season.

With the win, Antonelli’s lead in the world championship standings burgeoned to a 20-point advantage over second-place driver George Russell — Antonelli’s teammate.

The start of the race featured a plethora of chaos. Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc took advantage of an opening-lap melee; when Red Bull-Ford’s Max Verstappen and Antonelli locked up their tires, Leclerc sailed by.

Verstappen, caught in traffic, made contact and slipped to ninth after one lap. 

“I didn’t expect Charles to brake that early, so to avoid him, obviously, I locked up,” Antonelli said. “Then, I was a bit lucky with what happened then in turn two [with Verstappen’s spin].”

Verstappen clawed back, however. After pitting on lap nine due to a safety car that was the result of race-ending crashes suffered by Alpine’s Pierre Gasly and Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar, he pulled back into the points at lap 18.

Verstappen, who started on hard tires, eventually took the lead midway through the race when Antonelli and McLaren’s Lando Norris pitted. During the ensuing pit cycle, Antonelli successfully undercut Norris – a note that loomed large at race’s end.

Verstappen’s lead was short-lived. Antonelli picked off the fading Dutchman for the lead on lap 29, and Norris immediately threatened for second place. The McLaren drive snatched second place on the main straightaway heading into lap 30 and held it at the track’s first turn.

From there, the pivotal story centered around the final podium spot. Verstappen held third for most of the latter half of the race, but he continually slipped. By lap 34, he was more than seven seconds back and four laps later, that advantage had increased to 11-plus seconds.

In the meantime, Norris threatened Antonelli for the race lead, slashing the deficit down to six-tenths of a second around lap 40. But he couldn’t get any closer. Over the remaining 17 laps, Antonelli methodically built his advantage up to an eventual 3.264 seconds over Norris at the checkered flag.

“There’s no excuses other than that — we got undercut,” Norris said. “We should have boxed first. Kimi did a good job. Hats off to Merc and Kimi. They drove a good race. Easy to make mistakes out there with the big braking zones and with these cars, but he didn’t make any big enough for me to capitalize on, so I have to be happy.

“I think as a team, we have to be happy. I’m gutted to miss out on a win here in Miami, I think it was possible today, but yeah, not the pace to get back past him in the end, so we take it on the chin.”

By lap 47, Verstappen – at that point 15-plus seconds behind the pair of Antonelli and Norris – had dropped out of the podium, ceding third to Leclerc. By lap 52, he was down to fourth, dropping behind Norris’ McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri.

Piastri passed Leclerc, who then spun around and hit the barrier. The damage was not substantive enough to knock Leclerc out of the race, though he dropped two further spots to finish sixth at the line – nipped by Verstappen heading down the straightaway.

Ahead, Piastri claimed third, his second in as many races after failing to finish the first two events of the season.

“The first stint before the safety car, I made a few mistakes and just wasn’t as good as I hoped it would be,” Piastri said. “But I think the second half of the race felt much more comfortable. I think the pace was just a lot better as well and was able to chase down George and obviously Charles at the end as well.”

Russell finished in fourth, with Verstappen rounding out the top five. Verstappen (26 points) has vaulted to seventh in the championship as a result of his fifth-place finish, jumping ahead of Haas’ Oliver Bearman (17 points) and Gasly.

After the race, Verstappen was handed a five-second time penalty for going over the white line while exiting pit lane. Verstappen would have finished sixth, but Leclerc was hit with a 20-second time penalty for driving over the chicanes on the final lap. The Monegasque was demoted to eighth as a result.

Alpine’s Franco Colapinto claimed his first points of the season, rising as high as fourth when others pitted and settling for a seventh-place finish.

The remainder of the top-10 was rounded out by Williams teammates Carlos Sainz and Alexander Albon, who combined for their first double-points finish of the season.

Four teams — Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren and Williams — placed both their cars in the top 10, with Red Bull’s Verstappen and Alpine’s Colapinto the sole points finishers for their respective teams.

After being on break since March 29, Formula One again takes a pause. The festivities will not commence again until the weekend of May 24, when the championship travels to Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal for the Canadian Grand Prix.

“This is just the beginning,” Antonelli said. “The road is still long, but we’re working super hard and the team is doing an incredible job. Without them, I wouldn’t be here, so mainly thanks to them, to my family. And yeah, I’m going to enjoy this one and then get to work.”

The finish: 

1. Kimi Antonelli, 2. Lando Norris, 3. Oscar Piastri, 4. George Russell, 5. Max Verstappen, 6. Charles Leclerc, 7. Lewis Hamilton, 8. Franco Colapinto, 9. Carlos Sainz, 10. Alexander Albon, 11. Oliver Bearman, 12. Gabriel Bortoleto, 13. Esteban Ocon, 14. Arvid Lindblad, 15. Fernando Alonso, 16. Sergio Perez, 17. Lance Stroll, 18. Valterri Bottas. DNF: Nico Hulkenberg, Liam Lawson, Pierre Gasly, Isack Hadjar