United States GP 2026: Antonelli wins in Austin on one stop and the title waits a week
Kimi Antonelli won the United States Grand Prix on a one-stop strategy, beating Charles Leclerc by 13 seconds, but an eighth place for George Russell and a fourth for Lewis Hamilton kept the title open until Mexico City.
Kimi Antonelli won the United States Grand Prix from pole at the Circuit of The Americas, finishing 13.078 seconds clear of Charles Leclerc 1.
It was his ninth win of the season. Mercedes called a one-stop strategy that no rival matched, and Antonelli made the hard tyre last 32 laps to the flag 2.
Max Verstappen finished third, 17.485 seconds back, with Lewis Hamilton fourth a second behind him 1.
Hamilton's fourth place is one reason the title is still open. Antonelli's route to a first title in Austin also needed Russell to finish ninth or lower, and Russell came home eighth 2.
Race result and podium
| Pos | Driver | Team | Laps | Time / gap | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | 56 | 1:35:16.650 | 25 1 |
| 2 | Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | 56 | +13.078s | 18 1 |
| 3 | Max Verstappen | Red Bull Racing | 56 | +17.485s | 15 1 |
| 4 | Lewis Hamilton | Ferrari | 56 | +18.515s | 12 1 |
| 5 | Lando Norris | McLaren | 56 | +30.521s | 10 1 |
| 6 | Isack Hadjar | Red Bull Racing | 56 | +34.373s | 8 1 |
| 7 | Oscar Piastri | McLaren | 56 | +52.674s | 6 1 |
| 8 | George Russell | Mercedes | 56 | +54.303s | 4 1 |
| 9 | Liam Lawson | Racing Bulls | 56 | +79.183s | 2 1 |
| 10 | Pierre Gasly | Alpine | 56 | +87.516s | 1 1 |
Three cars failed to finish. Valtteri Bottas stopped his Cadillac on lap 48, Franco Colapinto retired with damage on lap 35 and Oliver Bearman went out on lap 24 1.
Nico Hulkenberg came home 11th, ahead of Arvid Lindblad, Gabriel Bortoleto, Esteban Ocon, Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso 1.
Alex Albon, Carlos Sainz and Sergio Perez were the last three classified, all a lap down 1.
Why the title has to wait
Antonelli arrived in Austin with three conditions for a first title: win the race, Russell ninth or lower, and Hamilton outside the top four 2.
Two of the three went unmet. Russell finished eighth, one place above the cut-off, and Hamilton came through to fourth, a second off the podium 1.
The arithmetic now favours Antonelli almost completely. He has 365 points to Russell's 242 and Hamilton's 241, with 125 points left for any one driver 3.
Two more points would settle it whatever Russell does over the last five rounds. Ninth place in Mexico City is enough 4.
At 20 years old, he would be the youngest champion in the sport's history 5.
Qualifying and the grid
| Pos | Driver | Team | Q3 time | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | 1:34.035 | Leader 6 |
| 2 | Max Verstappen | Red Bull Racing | 1:34.214 | +0.179s 6 |
| 3 | Isack Hadjar | Red Bull Racing | 1:34.250 | +0.215s 6 |
| 4 | Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | 1:34.267 | +0.232s 6 |
| 5 | Lewis Hamilton | Ferrari | 1:34.311 | +0.276s 6 |
| 6 | George Russell | Mercedes | 1:34.476 | +0.441s 6 |
| 7 | Oscar Piastri | McLaren | 1:34.803 | +0.768s 6 |
| 8 | Lando Norris | McLaren | 1:35.049 | +1.014s 6 |
| 9 | Arvid Lindblad | Racing Bulls | 1:36.049 | +2.014s 6 |
| 10 | Liam Lawson | Racing Bulls | No time set 6 | — |
Toto Wolff called it "a miracle lap", and Leclerc said Ferrari's own Saturday was where their victory chance went 2.
"We were very strong" in practice, Leclerc said. "In the final laps of Q3 it was extremely difficult to bring the tyres up to temperature, and we probably lost a shot at the victory there" 9.
Red Bull put both cars in the top three. Ferrari had both in the top five, and McLaren both in the top eight 6.
Gasly, Hulkenberg, Bortoleto, Colapinto, Alonso and Bearman went out in Q2. Ocon, Stroll, Sainz, Albon, Perez and Bottas went out in Q1 6.
Four drivers carried grid penalties into Sunday. Lindblad's five places for an extra power unit element dropped him from ninth to 14th, which lifted Lawson to ninth and Gasly to tenth 10.
Colapinto fell from 14th to 20th on a 10-place penalty, and Bortoleto from 13th to 21st on 80 places for power unit elements 10.
Stroll started from the pit lane after his car was modified under parc fermé conditions 10.
How Antonelli won it
Mercedes and McLaren started their four cars on the medium tyre. Every other car in the top ten, both Red Bulls included, went out on softs 2.
Antonelli held the lead off the line. Verstappen lost second to Leclerc, who went round his outside through Turns 3 to 5 9.
Verstappen took the place back later in the same lap through the final sector, by which point Antonelli was two seconds up the road 5.
A short Virtual Safety Car came early to clear debris, too briefly for anyone to close on the leader 2.
Verstappen opened the pit window at the end of lap 13, taking a second set of softs. That committed Red Bull to two stops 5.
Antonelli stayed out until the end of lap 24, took hards and rejoined fourth, just clear of Hamilton 2.
Red Bull brought Verstappen in again on lap 33. Half a lap later Antonelli went past Leclerc into the Turn 12 braking zone and had the lead back for good 5.
From there the only threat was arithmetic. Leclerc passed Verstappen for second in the closing laps, and Hamilton followed him past Norris into fourth 2.
Bottas's stopped Cadillac then brought a second Virtual Safety Car and froze that order, ending Hamilton's run at the podium a second short 25.
Strategy: one stop against two
Antonelli had no new soft tyres left, so he started on the medium with the hard as the only alternative. He expected the medium to struggle 9.
The hard turned out to be the best of the three compounds, a surprise in a season where the soft had usually been quickest 9.
Mercedes told him to run as long as he could, then committed to the one-stop when the medium stint held its pace 2.
"The hard felt very robust, so I felt pretty confident to go all the way to the end," Antonelli said 9.
Red Bull went the other way. Verstappen's second set was another set of softs, and he said afterwards that the call was not agreed with him 11.
"It was quite clear that the people on the harder compounds were finding a lot of grip, so I guess we also didn't really react to that," Verstappen said 9.
Team principal Laurent Mekies said Red Bull had followed what worked in the previous two races, and accepted the degradation in that stint was too high to make a two-stop pay 11.
Ferrari read the race the same way as Red Bull. Leclerc called it "always a two-stop" on paper and doubted a one-stop would have got him to Antonelli 9.
McLaren split the difference by staying out. Norris ran to fifth on one stop and briefly held second, then lost three places as his hard tyres faded 2.
Piastri made the same tyre last well enough to keep Russell's Mercedes behind him for around thirty laps 12.
Red Bull's Sunday of small failures
"Terrible: the pace, the wrong tyre, s**t pitstop, s**t engine braking. Nothing worked," Verstappen said on the radio after the flag 11.
His car picked up debris damage around lap eight and ran with inconsistent engine braking for the rest of the afternoon 12.
Both Red Bulls also fought radio problems all race. Hadjar left the pits on the wrong engine map and lost about a second a lap on the hard tyre because of it 13.
"It's the little things we can't do," Hadjar said. "We fix these two already, we might be on the podium" 11.
Hadjar wants the clutch redesigned, calling it too fragile for the temperatures it faces. Mekies said the fixes needed are hardware changes for 2027 11.
Third and sixth still carried Red Bull past McLaren into third in the constructors' championship 4.
The rest of the field
Bearman took a 10-second penalty for causing the lap-two collision with Gasly at Turn 13. The damage cost him a second a lap and he retired on lap 24 13.
Gasly lost around 10 points of downforce in that contact and still scored a point for tenth 13.
Alonso and Albon collided on the opening lap. Alonso drove the rest of the race with bargeboard damage, had a slow second stop and finished 16th 13.
Afterwards Alonso said Albon belongs to a lower third of the grid "where the quality of the drivers is very low" 14.
Russell served five seconds for leaving the track while fighting Piastri on lap one, with the penalty dropping him behind Piastri when he stopped 2.
"I just didn't have the pace and I'm unsure why that is," he said. "Once I caught up with the McLaren of Piastri, I just couldn't overtake" 12.
Lawson scored for the third race running, finishing ninth after a one-stop and a 31-lap final stint on the hards 12.
Hulkenberg's 11th left Audi without points, and Williams has now gone three races without scoring 2.
Championship: 123 points clear, and a tie for third
| Pos | Driver | Team | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | 365 3 |
| 2 | George Russell | Mercedes | 242 3 |
| 3 | Lewis Hamilton | Ferrari | 241 3 |
| 4 | Max Verstappen | Red Bull Racing | 236 3 |
| 5 | Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | 233 3 |
| 6 | Lando Norris | McLaren | 211 3 |
| 7 | Oscar Piastri | McLaren | 144 3 |
| 8 | Isack Hadjar | Red Bull Racing | 105 3 |
| 9 | Liam Lawson | Racing Bulls | 77 3 |
| 10 | Pierre Gasly | Alpine | 42 3 |
| Pos | Team | Points |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mercedes | 607 4 |
| 2 | Ferrari | 474 4 |
| 3 | Red Bull Racing | 355 4 |
| 4 | McLaren | 355 4 |
| 5 | Racing Bulls | 102 4 |
| 6 | Alpine | 69 4 |
Nine points cover second to fifth. Russell is 242, Hamilton 241, Verstappen 236 and Leclerc 233, with Verstappen's podium moving him to within five of Hamilton 3.
Red Bull and McLaren are level on 355 points, with Red Bull listed third 4.
Ferrari outscored Mercedes in Austin, 30 points to 29, and trails by 133 with 215 still available across the last five rounds 4.
Racing Bulls stayed fifth, 33 points clear of Alpine 4.
Next: Mexico City
The championship moves to the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez for the Mexico City Grand Prix on 30 October to 1 November, the first of five remaining rounds 1516.
Antonelli needs two points there to be champion 4.
References
- 1
- 2
- 32026 F1 drivers' standings
formula1.com
- 42026 F1 championship standings after the United States Grand Prix
racingnews365.com
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8FP3: Hamilton goes fastest in final practice
formula1.com
- 9
- 10United States Grand Prix 2026 – Starting grid
formula1.com
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14Alonso calls 33% of the F1 grid 'low quality'
the-race.com
- 15F1 schedule 2026 – official race calendar
formula1.com
- 16Mexico City Grand Prix 2026
formula1.com
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