Kimi Antonelli has won a chaotic stop-start Monaco Grand Prix, finishing six seconds ahead of Lewis Hamilton, in a race full of safety cars, red flags, penalties caused by sensor failures and drama. The Italian once again kept his cool in a race where everything was thrown at him, and the first Italian to win the race for over two decades and the youngest ever driver to win the most famous race of the season.<\/p>\n
Throughout the race, Antonelli looked to hold an advantage of twenty-seconds before the red flag, over the seven-time champion, despite the pressure of the Ferrari, the track breaking up. His fifth win in six races as he reaches the quarter mark puts the man from Imola in control of the championship.<\/p>\n
Antonelli took control early of the chaos, building an early lead of four seconds in the opening laps, though Hamilton came back in the first half of the race. By the time the race approached half distance, the Italian\u2019s lead was up to twelve seconds. From there, it looked increasingly easy for Antonelli; a minor scare emerged when his Mercedes powertrain suffered a small derate on the run to Massenet, but Mercedes was able to identify the issue.<\/p>\n
At each of the restarts in the race, Antonelli has enough to cover off the man he replaced at Mercedes eighteen months ago. Hamilton was able to hang onto second after being able to serve his penalty for speeding correctly before the sensor issue emerged, resulting in several drivers wrongly being referred for the same offence.<\/p>\n
The seven-time world champion equals his boyhood hero Ayrton Senna\u2019s record of eight podiums in Monte Carlo. As he continued his upwards trend in form with his second-place finish in the second race weekend, but even with the red flags, the Ferrari looked not to have the pace to fight for victory.<\/p>\n
His teammate George Russell was third at the final restart but had to serve a drive-through penalty in the closing stages, which dropped him down the order to fourteenth. The next driver, Pierre Gasly, was one of several drivers to be given a penalty for speeding in the pit lane, but questions are being asked about why so many drivers were being caught for speeding, with a theory of a possible failure of the sensor.<\/p>\n
Following investigations by the stewards, all other incidents have come back as ‘no further action’, and Alpine has protested.<\/p>\n
Any penalties will not affect the top end of the championship standings. Antonelli leads Hamilton by sixty-six points, with Russell two points behind, while Mercedes has a seventy-nine-point lead over Ferrari.<\/p>\n
Hamilton, who finished second in Monaco: “I have to start by congratulating Kimi and the Mercedes team. My old family they’ve done it again, they’ve delivered an amazing car, and Kimi’s doing an incredible job delivering week in, week out. It’s great to see and I’m really happy for them.<\/p>\n
Hadjar, who finished third, added, “We got off to a clean start, managing the race and within the first 10-15 laps, I started having massive drivability issues around here. If there is one track that you don’t want want that it is here. It was incredibly challenging having to cover 60 laps like that. Even towards the end, I was still lacking power on the restart.”<\/p>\n
Although the top four teams finished in the top four, none of them managed a double-point score. Max Verstappen didn\u2019t make the start after his car went into anti-stall, Lando Norris suffered an as-yet-unknown power issue, Charles Leclerc crashed on the restart on lap sixty-four after a brake failure, and Russell\u2019s penalty dropped him out the points.<\/p>\n
Gasly\u2019s penalty dropped him to seventh in the classification, which prompted his fellow Frenchman to third, but the Red Bull driver was seventeen seconds behind Hamilton. That drama denied McLaren a podium in their thousandth Grand Prix, with Oscar Piastri just over eight tenths behind.<\/p>\n
Hadjar was promoted provisionally to third, scoring his first podium, which he shared with his hero Hamilton, as the seven-time champion equalled his hero Senna\u2019s podium record in Monaco.<\/p>\n
Liam Lawson finished the race fifth, two and a half seconds ahead of teammate Arvid Lindblad, as the Australian equalled the best finish of his career, and the Englishman scored the best result of his career, the team\u2019s best result since 2021. Gasly, who scored that result, finished a second behind after his penalty was applied.<\/p>\n
Alex Albon was eighth as he finished three seconds ahead of Esteban Ocon, while pending further investigation into a false start, Sergio Perez finished almost three seconds behind his former teammate and scored the first point for Cadillac in their debut season.<\/p>\n
Perez was the first driver to be given a penalty for mistakenly starting in Gabriel Bortoleto’s empty grid box, as the Brazilian started the grand prix from the pit lane. After the race, Perez was given a further ten-second time penalty for being out of position at the second standing start, meaning Cadillac loses there first points.<\/p>\n
Although the final result could be hours away, as there are several investigations still being conducted by the stewards.<\/p>\n
Fernando Alonso could be a big winner if any penalties are awarded, finishing eleventh nearly three seconds outside the points. If he is promoted, he would score Aston Martin\u2019s first points of the season as he finished eight and a half tenths ahead of his prot\u00e9g\u00e9, Gabriel Bortoletto.<\/p>\n
Russell\u2019s drive through penalty dropped him to thirteenth, the Englishman six tenths behind the Brazilian and seven and a half seconds ahead of the second Audi of Nico Hulkenberg. The German was penalised ten seconds for causing a collision, Franco Colapinto was given a five-second penalty for speeding in the pit lane.<\/p>\n
Though Carlos Sainz was classified sixteenth, he was the final retirement.<\/p>\n
Kimi Antonelli has won a chaotic stop-start Monaco Grand Prix, finishing six seconds ahead of Lewis Hamilton, in a race full of safety cars, red flags, penalties caused by sensor failures and drama. The Italian once again kept his cool in a race where everything was thrown at him, and the first Italian to win<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15457,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[2339,418,709,2232,2252,1298,1362,1363,1364,1367,1604,1612,1637,2344,1843],"class_list":["post-16038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-race-reports","tag-2339","tag-circuit-de-monaco","tag-ferrari","tag-isack-hadjar","tag-kimi-antonelli","tag-mercedes","tag-monaco","tag-monaco-gp","tag-monaco-grand-prix","tag-monte-carlo","tag-race","tag-race-report","tag-red-bull","tag-red-bull-ford","tag-lewis-hamilton"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16038"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16047,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16038\/revisions\/16047"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}