Kimi Antonelli celebrates Sunday's Monaco Grand Prix victory. (F1 photo)

By Jacob Seelman, SWN News Editor

MONACO (June 7, 2026) – In a Louis Vuitton Monaco Grand Prix where virtually every other competitor behind him mis-stepped along the way, 19-year-old Kimi Antonelli was pure perfection on Sunday.

The Mercedes youngster drove a masterful race from start to finish, completing a Grand Slam in Formula One’s most prestigious event by leading every lap from the pole and setting the fastest lap of the race along the way.

Though his outright pace might not have been evident during practice to open the weekend, by the time race day began, Antonelli’s fifth straight F-1 victory was never in doubt.

“Incredible weekend, incredible race. We had such incredible pace, it was all coming so natural,” said Antonelli. “The car was incredible and gave me confidence to push.

“It is still a long season, and we need to keep pushing and keep raising the bar, [because] the goal is to keep performing like this. But this is a really good moment.”

Though the first three quarters of Sunday’s 78-lap race were a comfortable cruise for Antonelli, a few nerves crept in when – on lap 61 – Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll crashed at the final corner of the 19-turn, 2.074-mile street circuit inside the Monaco principality.

It led to a safety-car period where most of the field took a second pit stop, neutralizing several speeding penalties throughout the field as a result, but the field didn’t even get a full lap in after the resumption on lap 65 when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc crashed in the same spot as Stroll had.

That incident created a red-flag stoppage for officials to check the track at turn 19, where the asphalt had been recently resurfaced and appeared to be breaking up in one section.

But the stewards declared the track raceable and a second standing start followed with eight laps remaining. Hamilton tried to have a look at Antonelli on the short sprint to turn one, but Antonelli got his most superb launch of the season and ran off to the finish from there.

In the end, it was a 6.271-second margin of victory for the young Italian, who became the first from his country to taste the winner’s champagne in Monaco since Jarno Trulli in 2004.

“To be fair, I wasn’t super keen on restarting, but I gathered my emotions [and] my thoughts and just tried to refocus on restarting,” Antonelli reflected. “And once I got away and made it to P1 in the first corner, from that moment on I just enjoyed the last few laps.”

Hamilton chased Antonelli through the final laps but could do no better than second in his Ferrari, though it was still a rally for the seven-time champion after copping a speeding penalty midway through.

Meanwhile, Isack Hadjar collected his first podium for Red Bull in third despite remaining under investigation after the race for a potential red-flag infringement.

McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and the Racing Bulls duo of Liam Lawson and Arvid Lindblad were credited with fourth through sixth place, respectively, with Alpine’s Pierre Gasly taking the checkered flag third on the road but dropping to seventh in the order due to a pair of five-second penalties for speeding himself.

Williams’ Alex Albon, Audi’s Nico Hulkenberg, and Haas’ Esteban Ocon completed the top 10 initially, but Hulkenberg was handed a 10-second time penalty immediately after the finish for causing a collision with Carlos Sainz following the lap-71 restart that sent Sainz into the wall and out of the race.

That elevated Ocon to ninth and gave the provisional final point to Cadillac’s Sergio Perez, marking the American marque’s first point since joining the F-1 grid at the start of the 2026 season.

Antonelli’s ripper run of five straight wins has given him a 66-point lead over Mercedes teammate George Russell, who had a five-second time penalty early that was elevated to a drive-through when he didn’t immediately serve the stop-and-hold at his pit stop prior to the red flag.

That dropped Russell well outside the points from third place, leaving him 13th in the final results.

Among the shock retirements Sunday were both Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and defending F-1 champion Lando Norris of McLaren.

Norris fell victim to a power-unit issue just past the midway point, while Verstappen’s car failed him at the initial launch, forcing him to the garage before a lap was ever completed at Monaco.

Formula One teams return to action June 14 at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya with the running of the MSC Cruises Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, as the Madring takes over the Spanish Grand Prix nomenclature.

Piastri won last year’s F-1 visit to Barcelona over Norris in a McLaren top-two sweep.

The finish:

Monaco G.P. (78 laps): 1. Kimi Antonelli, 2. Lewis Hamilton, 3. Isack Hadjar, 4. Oscar Piastri, 5. Liam Lawson, 6. Arvid Lindblad, 7. Pierre Gasly, 8. Alex Albon, 9. Esteban Ocon, 10. Sergio Perez, 11. Fernando Alonso, 12. Gabriel Bortoleto, 13. George Russell, 14. Nico Hulkenberg, 15. Franco Colapinto, 16. Carlos Sainz (DNF), 17. Charles Leclerc (DNF), 18. Lance Stroll (DNF), 19. Lando Norris (DNF), 20. Oliver Bearman (DNF), 21. Valtteri Bottas (DNF), 22. Max Verstappen (DNF).