Race Report: Kimi Antonelli Becomes Youngest Ever World Champion with Mexico Podium

• Kimi Antonelli became the youngest world champion in F1 history by finishing P3 in today’s Mexico City Grand Prix, with team-mate George Russell coming home P6.

• Starting from P4, Kimi managed his opening stint strongly, combining pace with careful tyre management to extend his Soft tyres beyond 40 laps and put himself in contention for the podium.

• A red flag interruption due to a sizeable crash for the Cadillac of Valtteri Bottas ultimately removed the tyre offset he had built, with Kimi running P3 when the race was suspended.

• With the restart order taken from the control line at pit entry, however, Kimi resumed the race in P4.

• He quickly regained a podium position though with an impressive move on Leclerc into Turn 1 on the second lap after the restart.

• Kimi took P3 at the chequered flag, securing his 17th podium of the season and, most importantly, the 2026 World Drivers’ Championship.

• George meanwhile made a solid launch from P2 but suffered an unexpected lack of deployment on the run to Turn 1, costing him several positions.

• He subsequently made contact with Hadjar at Turn 6 and received a 10-second time penalty for causing a collision.

• George showed solid pace thereafter and, after serving his penalty, rejoined ahead of Piastri in P6.

• He took the restart following the red flag in sixth position and held that place to the chequered flag.

• Kimi becomes the youngest world champion in F1 history at just 20 years and 68 days old, surpassing Sebastian Vettel who was 23 years and 134 days old in 2010.

• He becomes the first Italian to become world champion since Alberto Ascari in 1953, ending a 73-year wait.

• He also becomes just the third Italian to win the world championship after Ascari and Giuseppe Farina.

• Kimi becomes the first graduate of the team’s junior programme to win the world championship and adds a 10^th Drivers’ title for the three-pointed star (’54, ’55, ’14, ’15, ’16, ’17, ’18, ’19, ’20).

George Russell

Firstly, congratulations to Kimi on a thoroughly deserved championship. He has done a fantastic job this season and can be incredibly proud of what he has achieved.

Unfortunately, it was a very disappointing race on my side. I made a good start and was in a strong position, but then we suffered an issue which caused me to not have full deployment down the straight. That cost us a lot of positions and ultimately took us out of contention for a strong result. It’s frustrating to have the race compromised by something outside of my control but that is racing.

We will reset after this weekend and look to come back stronger in Brazil. We still have a Constructors’ Championship to win and my full focus is on helping the team achieve that.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

Congratulations to Kimi on his first World Championship. It was quite an eventful race, but he did a really good job managing the Soft tyre in the first stint and was able to run it beyond 40 laps. That gave us some useful options for the end of the race, although the red flag effectively reset things and removed the tyre advantage we had created. He restarted P4 but made a very good move on Leclerc to get back into the podium positions and drove a very controlled race from there to take P3 and the title.

He has driven superbly across the season and the way he handled the race today, with everything that was at stake, was another demonstration of the progress he has made. It’s an incredible achievement for him and he should be rightly proud of himself.

George had a difficult afternoon through no fault of his own. The deployment issue on the run to Turn 1 cost him several positions and put him on the back foot from the very start. From there, he was having to recover in traffic and the contact with Hadjar and subsequent penalty made that task harder. He kept his head down, showed good pace and fought back to P6. It’s frustrating because we didn’t give him the start to the race that he needed and that is on us as team.

We have plenty to focus on as we head to Brazil We want to add the Constructors’ Championship to the Drivers’ title, and we know we still must deliver the performances to do that. We’ll enjoy today, then turn our attention very quickly to the next race.