Antonelli's Austin Win Leaves Rivals Fighting for Second as Red Bull Falters

Andrea Kimi Antonelli converted pole position into victory at the United States Grand Prix on Sunday, his ninth win of the season. The result stretches his championship lead to 123 points with five rounds remaining. Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen completed the podium at the Circuit of the Americas, while George Russell’s eighth place turned his hold on second in the standings into a four-way scramble. The title could be settled as early as Mexico City next Sunday.

Antonelli’s best drive yet, by his own reckoning

Antonelli’s Monza victory from 19th on the grid will be the clip that fills his season highlights reel. The 20-year-old sees it differently. Speaking to Motorsport.com, he rated Austin as the better performance, and his reasoning holds up.

Charging through a field is spectacular, but it comes with a kind of freedom. Every overtake is a gain and expectations start low. Leading from pole offers none of that. Antonelli had Verstappen alongside him on the front row and Isack Hadjar’s second Red Bull directly behind. From there, the race became an exercise in tyre management, defence and concentration, with nobody ahead to set a reference. That he made it look routine is the clearest sign yet of how far his racecraft has come since his rookie year.

The numbers now border on the decisive. Antonelli arrived in Texas 102 points clear of Russell and left with that margin at 123. Five Grands Prix carry a maximum of 125 points, so Russell’s mathematical hopes depend on a sequence of results that would require Antonelli to stop scoring almost entirely. If he closes it out, he will comfortably break Sebastian Vettel’s record as the sport’s youngest world champion.

Mercedes, at least, are relaxed about it. The team posted in-car footage on TikTok of an awkward reversing moment Antonelli suffered in Austin, with a caption teasingly noting his status as championship leader. Teams do not publicly mock drivers they are worried about. The tone says plenty about the atmosphere inside a squad that has won 12 of 18 Grands Prix and leads Ferrari by 133 points in the constructors’ standings.

Russell’s quiet afternoon

The other side of the garage told a very different story. Russell started sixth and finished eighth, scoring four points in a car that won the race. He has three victories this year, a respectable tally in most seasons, but Austin felt like the moment his campaign for second began to slip. The car was clearly not the problem.

Ferrari’s lost podium and a crowded fight for second

Leclerc’s drive from fourth to second showed what the Ferrari can do on its day. Lewis Hamilton’s afternoon showed how narrow the margins are. He gained a place from fifth to finish fourth, but told GPfans he regretted his set-up choices and believed a podium had been within reach.

A revealing radio exchange added to the picture. Hamilton asked his engineers to compare his car with Leclerc’s, explaining afterwards to PlanetF1 that “we continuously under-hit it for some reason”, a reference to a recurring shortfall against a target the team had set. When one driver is chasing a number all race and his team-mate on the same programme is not, the question becomes whether the gap lies in the driver, the set-up or the car itself. Hamilton’s instinct to ask was sound. The more uncomfortable point for Ferrari is that, in his second season at Maranello, such questions still need asking in the middle of a race.

The upside is that Austin has dragged both Ferrari drivers firmly into contention for runner-up:

Driver	Team	Points	Behind 2nd	Austin haul
George Russell	Mercedes	242	–	4
Lewis Hamilton	Ferrari	241	1	12
Max Verstappen	Red Bull	236	6	15
Charles Leclerc	Ferrari	233	9	18
Lando Norris	McLaren	211	31	10

Before Sunday, Russell held a nine-point cushion over Hamilton, 17 over Verstappen and 23 over Leclerc. Now just nine points cover all four. Second place in a dominated season is easily dismissed, but this contest will shape how Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes judge their own years.

Elkann’s visit

Off track, a visit from Ferrari chairman John Elkann has stoked fresh speculation in Italy about the team’s direction. Such visits are not unusual at this stage of the season, and reading too much into a chairman’s presence at a race is a familiar Maranello pastime. Still, a team with two wins against Mercedes’ 12 will face scrutiny over the winter, whatever the boardroom intends.

Red Bull brought back to earth

Red Bull drew level with McLaren on 355 points in the constructors’ championship, which sounds like a decent weekend. Inside the team, it will not feel like one. Verstappen dropped from second on the grid to third at the flag, and Hadjar slipped from third to sixth.

Three problems surfaced at once. The RacingNews365 podcast panel highlighted the return of gearbox gremlins, an unwelcome echo of earlier reliability concerns. Verstappen, speaking to Sky Sports F1, described team radio dropouts as “a disaster” after growing visibly frustrated during the race. And he was working with a new race engineer, as Gianpiero Lambiase prepares for his eventual departure from the team.

The last two are connected. Verstappen and Lambiase have worked together since 2016, through four world titles, and their exchanges became a fixture of race broadcasts precisely because the shorthand between them was so efficient. Any new pairing needs time to build that trust. Doing so while the radio is cutting out in the middle of a Grand Prix is close to the worst possible start. PlanetF1’s assessment of the new engineer’s first outing was cautiously positive, which is fair: nobody should judge the relationship on a weekend when the hardware failed both of them.

Verstappen’s other message

Verstappen also used his platform to tell online abusers, in fairly blunt terms, to leave a young driver within the Red Bull camp alone after a recent race. It was the right call. Junior drivers in a Verstappen-led team already work under intense scrutiny, and a word from the four-time champion carries more weight than any team statement.

Norris rolls the dice

Lando Norris started eighth and finished fifth, which looks like an unremarkable recovery until you hear how close it came to being something more. McLaren chose to gamble on strategy, and Norris admitted to RacingNews365 that he had been “praying” for outside intervention to make it work. It never arrived, but the strategy still came close to paying off.

From eighth on the grid, the gamble made complete sense. Following the same strategy as the cars ahead offers little more than a guaranteed eighth place. Splitting the strategy introduces variables, and variables are a midfield runner’s friend. McLaren were right to try it.

The wider picture is less flattering. Norris, the reigning champion, has two wins and 211 points and sits 31 behind the fight for second. Oscar Piastri started and finished seventh and has yet to win this season, a sharp decline for a driver who spent much of last year in title contention. McLaren took 16 points to Red Bull’s 23 on Sunday, and the tie on 355 shows how quickly a lead can evaporate. Third in the constructors’ standings is worth real money, and with five rounds left, it may come down to which of these teams has two drivers scoring regularly. Red Bull currently have the stronger second driver on form. McLaren have the more reliable car.

Stewards, gibes and the long road at the back

Oliver Bearman was astonished by the severity of the penalty the stewards handed him in Austin and called the decision “crazy” in comments reported by RacingNews365. Drivers criticising stewards is hardly new. Even so, a penalty that a young driver regards as wildly disproportionate deserves a clear public explanation. The sport has made progress on publishing the reasoning behind decisions, and the more consistently it does so, the less room there is for grievances like this to fester.

Further back, Fernando Alonso was unhappy with Alexander Albon’s driving and made a pointed remark about “back of the grid” drivers, which Albon answered. Context matters here. Alonso finished 16th and Albon 17th, both lapped, so any gibe about the back of the grid applies to both of them. Frustration is understandable from a two-time champion who started 12th and lost four places, but the remark said more about Aston Martin’s season than about Albon’s racecraft.

That season has been hard. Aston Martin have seven points, ahead of only Cadillac, in the first year of their works partnership with Honda. Koji Watanabe, president of Honda Racing Corporation, has reaffirmed the manufacturer’s commitment to Formula 1 despite the struggles. History supports his patience. Honda’s return with McLaren in 2015 was painful, yet the same engine programme went on to power Red Bull to titles. Recovering from a weak first season under new regulations is entirely possible. The question is whether Aston Martin’s owners and Alonso, at this stage of his career, share Honda’s sense of the timescale.

On the radar

• Mexico City’s thin air. The Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez sits well over 2,000 metres above sea level, which strains cooling and changes how engines and brakes behave. Red Bull, already battling gearbox trouble, will be watching their reliability margins closely.
• Verstappen’s new engineer, round two. A second weekend together, ideally with working radios, will give a fairer picture of whether the partnership can deliver before the season ends.
• Audi’s slow climb. Gabriel Bortoleto went from 21st to 13th and Nico Hülkenberg finished 11th, just out of the points. Audi trail Haas by seven points in the fight for seventh.
• RB’s cushion. Liam Lawson’s ninth place lifts RB F1 Team to 102 points in fifth, 33 clear of Alpine, while Arvid Lindblad climbed from 14th to 12th.
• Cadillac still waiting. Valtteri Bottas retired and Sergio Pérez finished 19th, leaving the newcomers without a point after 18 rounds. Five races remain for them to break their duck.
• The Mexico City maths. Antonelli needs only to avoid losing more than 22 points to Russell to put the title beyond reach, and a top-eight finish would do it whatever happens behind him. On his Austin form, he is likely to clinch it there rather than let it run to a later round.