The first Italian champion since 1953 sobbed with joy over the team radio as he took the chequered flag at the high-altitude Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez on Sunday. Red Bull’s Max Verstappen won the red-flagged and restarted race for his second win of the season, but Antonelli’s overall lead reached an unassailable 119 points after finishing third. Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton started from pole position and took a close second place – after clashing with teammate Charles Leclerc – on an afternoon of drama with two safety cars, multiple crashes and an agonising 33-minute halt with 25 of the 71 laps remaining.
Champion of the world,” said his race engineer Peter Bonnington, a regular target for the young driver’s practical jokes. He was then mobbed by his pit crew. The previous youngest champion was Germany’s Sebastian Vettel, who took the first of his four with Red Bull at 23 years and 134 days in 2010.
I’m trying to process what has just happened,” said Antonelli in comments to the crowd. And looking forward to some more battles in the future. The last Italian champion was Alberto Ascari, 73 years earlier.
I was getting emotional,” Antonelli told a later news conference. Leclerc finished fourth, McLaren’s outgoing champion Lando Norris was fifth and Antonelli’s teammate George Russell only sixth in a race he had to win to have any chance of staying in contention. That also meant Verstappen went second in the overall standings, with Hamilton third and pre-season favourite Russell plummeting to fourth and 130 points behind Antonelli.
Mercedes have 630 points in the constructors standings to Ferrari’s 504 and could clinch that title in Brazil next weekend. The race was stopped, after a brief safety car deployment, on lap 46 of 71 after Valtteri Bottas suffered a high-speed front-left suspension failure down the straight with his Cadillac pitched uncontrollably into the barriers at turn one. Bottas received medical attention in the car but then walked to an ambulance, giving a thumbs up, as the rest of the field returned to the pits.
He went to the medical centre and was released. Verstappen led from the restart, challenged by Hamilton with Antonelli passing Leclerc, and there was then another safety car when Lindblad and Piastri collided – with the field released to race again with nine laps to the chequered flag. Hamilton had led away from the original pole position, for the 105th time in his career but first for Ferrari at a full grand prix, with Leclerc slotting in behind from third on the grid.
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