2026 United States F1 GP

Kimi Antonelli took his ninth Grand Prix victory of the 2026 season at the Circuit of the Americas on 25 October, converting pole position into a 13.078-second win over Charles Leclerc after 56 laps. Max Verstappen completed the podium for Red Bull, his sixth consecutive top-three finish, while Lewis Hamilton crossed the line just 1.030 seconds behind him in fourth. The result moved Antonelli to the edge of the world title, but not over it: he needed George Russell to finish ninth or lower and Hamilton to finish outside the top four, and neither condition was met. Antonelli left Texas on 365 points, 123 clear of Russell and 124 ahead of Hamilton, with the Mexico City Grand Prix following a week later.

Antonelli started on the medium tyre and kept the lead into Turn 1, while the cars around him on softer rubber scrambled for position. Leclerc briefly moved into second from fourth on the grid before Verstappen, who had started alongside Antonelli on softs, dived back inside the Ferrari to reclaim the place before the end of the opening lap. Hamilton settled into fourth and Isack Hadjar, who had qualified an impressive third, slipped to fifth. Further back, Russell and Oscar Piastri made contact as the Mercedes driver defended into Turn 12. Russell ran off the circuit and rejoined ahead of the McLaren, and the stewards later issued a five-second time penalty for gaining a lasting advantage, reduced from the usual ten seconds because it was a first-lap incident and his earlier pressure on Hadjar had left him exposed to Piastri's attack. A Virtual Safety Car on lap 2 allowed marshals to clear debris, and once racing resumed Antonelli steadily eased away, holding a 2.8-second lead by lap 10. McLaren later swapped its drivers so that Lando Norris could run ahead of Piastri.

The race was shaped by the gap between Mercedes' one-stop plan and the more aggressive two-stop approaches of Red Bull and Ferrari. Verstappen was the first of the leaders to pit, taking a second set of softs, and Hamilton and Leclerc followed shortly afterwards onto mediums, with Hamilton reporting that his front tyres were fading. Norris and Piastri switched to hards, Norris losing time with a slow stop. The early stoppers quickly found pace in clean air: Verstappen passed Russell, who was running long on his opening set, on lap 18, and Leclerc followed him through soon afterwards. Russell finally pitted on lap 22, serving his penalty and taking hards, and rejoined in tenth before Hadjar moved aside for him. Around the same time Oliver Bearman received a ten-second penalty for a collision with Pierre Gasly, the stewards ruling that the Haas had not drawn sufficiently alongside at the apex and that Bearman was wholly to blame. He retired with damage after 24 laps. Antonelli extended his first stint until the end of lap 24 before switching to hards and rejoining in fourth, while Hadjar stopped a lap later and was placed on hards rather than the mediums he had expected.

The decisive phase came around half distance. On lap 26 Verstappen led Leclerc by 4.3 seconds, with Antonelli a further seven seconds behind on fresher tyres, but the Red Bull driver needed a second stop and made it on lap 31, fitting mediums while reporting radio and engine-braking difficulties. Leclerc inherited the lead only briefly, as Antonelli dived down the inside on lap 32 to take back first place. From there the Mercedes driver managed his hard tyres to the finish, surviving a lock-up at Turn 12 after a tight move to lap Carlos Sainz. Franco Colapinto retired the Alpine after 35 laps, having carried floor and sidepod damage from early contact with Arvid Lindblad. Hamilton made his second stop on lap 38 and Leclerc stayed out several laps longer before switching to hards, a call that gave him the freshest tyres in the lead group for the final stint. Leclerc used them to set the fastest lap of the race, a 1:37.976 on lap 42, as Hamilton passed Hadjar for fifth on the same lap.

The final fifteen laps reshaped the podium behind the leader. Norris had run second on a one-stop strategy, but his worn hards could not resist the recovering cars. Verstappen passed him into Turn 1 on lap 47, and Norris locked up under pressure moments later, letting Leclerc through as well. Two laps later Leclerc overtook Verstappen for second, and Hamilton cleared Norris for fourth on lap 51. Valtteri Bottas then stopped on track after 48 laps, with Cadillac pointing to a suspected power unit problem, and the resulting Virtual Safety Car neutralised the closing stages until three laps from home. It removed any realistic chance for Hamilton to catch Verstappen, and Antonelli finished comfortably clear. Norris held fifth ahead of Hadjar, sixth after a long opening stint on softs, while Piastri took seventh. Russell finished eighth after his penalty, with Liam Lawson and Gasly completing the top ten. Nico Hülkenberg was the last driver on the lead lap in eleventh, Gabriel Bortoleto recovered from 21st on the grid to 13th, and Lance Stroll climbed from the pit lane to 15th.

The championship picture narrowed sharply. Russell, Hamilton, Verstappen and Leclerc remain separated by just nine points in the fight for second, but none of them is close to Antonelli, whose nine victories also give him the tie-break advantage. Mercedes extended its lead in the constructors' standings to 133 points over Ferrari, 607 to 474, while Red Bull and McLaren left Austin level on 355 points in the battle for third. Antonelli will arrive in Mexico City needing only a modest result to secure the title, and Russell and Hamilton must now win there to keep the contest alive.