Kimi Antonelli won the Italian Grand Prix at Monza on Sunday 6 September 2026, driving for Mercedes. He started the race 19th on the grid after a power-unit penalty, and finished 3.857 seconds ahead of his team-mate George Russell, with Max Verstappen of Red Bull third. He is 20 years old, and he is the first Italian to win his home race since Ludovico Scarfiotti did so in 1966.
The numbers behind the afternoon are striking. Formula 1 reports that the penalty was 30 places, which sent him to the back of the field. GrandPrix.com calls 19th the second-lowest grid position from which a Formula 1 Grand Prix has been won. Mercedes says it was the 50th Formula 1 win by an Italian driver, the team’s 250th Grand Prix win as a power-unit maker and its eighth at Monza, the first since 2018. For Antonelli, who was born in Bologna, it was also his seventh win of the 2026 season, according to GrandPrix.com.
How the race was won
Antonelli was running 12th by the time the race was stopped early with a red flag, and he worked his way forward over the 53 laps. According to the FIA’s report, the decisive moment came late. On lap 49 he tried to pass for the lead at the first chicane and failed, and on the following lap he went through and retook it. He also set the fastest lap of the race, a 1:23.504.
Afterwards, Antonelli said in the Mercedes race-day release that it was a day he would remember forever and the most special win of his career so far. He said that even from 19th he had believed this might be possible, and he thanked the team for an amazing car and for the support that had brought him to this point. The team principal, Toto Wolff, said nothing would have stopped him, according to Formula 1.
A childhood in a kart
His full name is Andrea Kimi Antonelli. Kimi is his middle name, and Mercedes says it is not a tribute to Kimi Räikkönen. He was born on 25 August 2006, the son of the former racing driver Marco Antonelli, who runs the family team, AKM, also known as Antonelli Motorsport. He began karting at seven in his father’s team, and won his first kart title in 2015.
By 2020 and 2021 he had become back-to-back European karting champion in the OK class. In 2019 he had joined the Mercedes Junior Programme, so the manufacturer that now employs him has followed his progress since he was a teenager. He made his single-seater debut in 2021.
The Gulf in his CV
For readers in the Gulf, one part of his story is close to home. His first win in a car came in January 2022 in the Formula 4 UAE championship at Abu Dhabi. Later that year he won both the Italian and the ADAC Formula 4 titles, taking 22 wins from 35 starts across the two series.
In 2023 he was Formula Regional Middle East champion, with three wins, and the same year he won the Formula Regional European title, clinching it at Zandvoort. His route to Monza ran through the family kart team and the Gulf circuits, where several of his early titles were won.
Up through Formula 2
In 2024 he moved to Formula 2 with PREMA. He won the sprint race at Silverstone and then again in Hungary, which made him the youngest multiple winner in the category’s history. He finished the season sixth overall.
Mercedes then gave him his Formula 1 debut at the 2025 Australian Grand Prix, where he finished fourth, wearing the number 12. His first podium followed at the 2025 Canadian Grand Prix, where he took third place.
The first wins
His first Grand Prix victory came in the 2026 Chinese Grand Prix at Shanghai, from pole position. That made him the youngest pole-sitter in Formula 1 history. Before the summer break he had also won in Japan, Miami, Canada and Monaco. Five wins in a row were ended by an engine failure at Barcelona.
The results read like a sudden breakthrough, but his own career suggests something more patient. He has been moved up one rung at a time since the age of seven, and nearly every step has been a championship or a race win.
Why Monza mattered
Monza has a particular place in Italian motorsport. It is the circuit where the national crowd has waited many years for a home winner, and the barrier of 1966 was a long one. Ferrari, who normally carry that hope, struggled at their home race this year, according to Formula 1’s round-up, so the win by a Bologna-born driver in a Mercedes carried its own mixture of feelings in the grandstands.
What the afternoon showed was patience under pressure: a pass that failed on lap 49 was followed by one that worked a lap later. It is a habit that can be learned in karts, and it is rarely seen at 20.
What comes next
The season continues. Russell won the next round, the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on 26 September. For the story of the man himself, the next step is simpler: to keep doing what the early career pattern suggests, which is to win the next race he is given a car for. The boy from Bologna who began at seven in his father’s team is now one of the names of his sport.
Sources: FIA, Formula 1, Mercedes-Benz Italia, Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team, GrandPrix.com