He didn't win the race. He didn't need to. Kimi Antonelli finished third in Mexico City and became the youngest World Champion in the history of Formula 1.
Sebastian Vettel's record had stood since 2010 — 23 years and 134 days. Antonelli has taken it by more than three years, in only his second season, in the car he inherited from Lewis Hamilton.
The Podium
on lap 27
How It Was Sealed
We wrote after Austin that Mexico had gone from fussy to almost trivial: win, and it's over. In the end he didn't need the win at all.
With Russell the only realistic threat left, Antonelli needed to finish ninth or better to be champion regardless of anything else. He started fourth, ran a late stop, held position, and then passed Charles Leclerc into Turn 1 at the standing restart to take the final podium place.
Third place. Fifteen points. Four rounds to spare.
The Race Around It
And it was quite a race to win a championship in. Lewis Hamilton took pole — his first for Ferrari — with Russell alongside him on the front row, and for a few minutes it looked like Ferrari's day in every sense.
Then Turn 4 happened. Hamilton and Leclerc collided, both were placed under investigation, and Hamilton came on the radio complaining that he had been "pushed out" by his own teammate. Further back, Russell tangled with Isack Hadjar, spinning the Red Bull to the rear of the field and earning himself a ten-second penalty.
Leclerc picked up a five-second penalty for gaining an advantage by leaving the track. Hamilton, who finished second, accused the stewards of "handing" Leclerc the win — a remarkable thing to say about a race neither of them won, and a sign of how badly the afternoon had gone inside that garage.
Ferrari started on pole, finished second and fourth, and spent the race arguing with each other and the officials. On any other Sunday it would be the main story.
Verstappen inherited the lead when Leclerc pitted at the end of lap 27 and never gave it back. It was a messy afternoon elsewhere too: Alonso retired on lap six, Stroll stopped at Turn 6 after a virtual safety car, Bearman went out after contact with Hülkenberg — who took a ten-second penalty — and Valtteri Bottas crashed heavily at Turn 1 after a suspension failure, bringing out a red flag. He was cleared by the medical team.
The FIA set a standing restart from the pre-red-flag order, which handed Hamilton third ahead of Antonelli. Antonelli took the place back at Turn 1 anyway. Later, Piastri's McLaren was damaged in a collision with Arvid Lindblad that triggered a second safety car and a post-race investigation.
"Dream come true."
That one deserves a footnote of its own: Haas dropped Esteban Ocon partway through the weekend without giving a reason and put Hirakawa in the car for his first Grand Prix. He finished thirteenth.
Final Classification
| Pos | Driver | Team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Max Verstappen | Red Bull | Winner |
| 2 | Lewis Hamilton | Ferrari | Pole |
| 3 | Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | Champion |
| 4 | Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | 5s penalty |
| 5 | Lando Norris | McLaren | |
| 6 | George Russell | Mercedes | 10s penalty |
| 7 | Oscar Piastri | McLaren | under review |
| 8 | Franco Colapinto | Alpine | |
| 9 | Liam Lawson | Racing Bulls | |
| 10 | Pierre Gasly | Alpine | |
| 11 | Gabriel Bortoleto | Audi | |
| 12 | Isack Hadjar | Red Bull | |
| 13 | Ryo Hirakawa | Haas | F1 debut |
| 14 | Alexander Albon | Williams | |
| 15 | Carlos Sainz | Williams | |
| 16 | Nico Hülkenberg | Audi | 10s penalty |
| 17 | Sergio Pérez | Cadillac | 5s penalty |
| 18 | Arvid Lindblad | Racing Bulls | |
| DNF | Oliver Bearman | Haas | contact |
| DNF | Valtteri Bottas | Cadillac | suspension · red flag |
| DNF | Lance Stroll | Aston Martin | |
| DNF | Fernando Alonso | Aston Martin | lap 6 |
Piastri's seventh place was subject to a post-race investigation at the time of writing.
What He Broke
Still Thinking About
A season that started with China and never really stopped
His first Grand Prix win came in China, and he followed it with five in a row. He won at Monza from nineteenth on the grid — the first Italian to win his home race since Ludovico Scarfiotti in 1966. Nine wins, a championship, and a record that had stood for sixteen years, all in his second season.
He replaced Hamilton, and beat him to it
Antonelli took the Mercedes seat Lewis Hamilton vacated at the end of 2024. On Sunday Hamilton took pole and finished second in a Ferrari, and watched a 20-year-old in his old car be crowned. There is no neat moral in that, but it is a hell of a piece of symmetry.
Ferrari had the fastest car and the worst afternoon
Pole position, both cars in the top four, more points than anyone bar Red Bull — and a first-lap collision between teammates, a penalty, and a driver publicly accusing the stewards of handing his teammate a win. They are second in the constructors' and nowhere near settled internally.
Verstappen won again and nobody noticed
Three wins in four races. He has been comfortably the strongest driver of the back half of this season, and it has earned him second in a championship that was decided without him. Red Bull's problem was never October; it was March through August.
Championship After Mexico
Constructors
Third in the constructors' is the live fight now: just five points between McLaren and a Red Bull team that has out-scored everyone since September.
What's Left
Four rounds remain: São Paulo on 6–8 November, Las Vegas on 19–21 November, then Qatar and Abu Dhabi. A decision on whether those last two go ahead has not yet been taken.
With the drivers' title settled, the remaining stories are Red Bull's charge at McLaren for third, Verstappen's pursuit of second overall, and whether Leclerc can deliver the win he said in Austin he was confident of taking before the season ends.
LOcO Says
It is worth sitting with the number for a second. Twenty years and sixty-eight days. Vettel's record was one of those that looked structurally safe — you need a generational talent to arrive in a championship-winning car almost immediately, and the sport does not hand those out often. Antonelli got the Mercedes seat at eighteen, won in his second season, and knocked three years off a sixteen-year-old mark.
The criticism all autumn — ours included — was that he was winning a championship by managing it rather than dominating it. Austin answered that, and Mexico made the point differently: on a chaotic afternoon with a red flag, a standing restart and a grid full of penalties, the title-winning move was a clean overtake into Turn 1 to take a podium he didn't even need.
Seventy-three years after Ascari, Italy has a World Champion again, and he is twenty years old. Whatever the last four races bring, this season belongs to him.
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