Miami Grand Prix briefing: Kimi Antonelli beats Lando Norris, extends F1 championship lead

MIAMI, FLORIDA - MAY 03: Race winner Andrea Kimi Antonelli of Italy and Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team celebrates with his team in parc ferme during the F1 Grand Prix of Miami at Miami International Autodrome on May 03, 2026 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Peter Fox/Getty Images) Peter Fox Share article1Formula 1’s teenage revolution continues. For the third straight race weekend, 19-year-old Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli stood atop the podium at race end. This time, the championship leader stood next to reigning champion Lando Norris, whom he held off for the final stint of the race. Oscar Piastri rounded off the podium after a late pass on Charles Leclerc, who then tumbled down the order. Antonelli’s win gives him 100 points on the season, 24 points clear of teammate George Russell, who finished fourth on Sunday. Mercedes leads the Constructors’ Championship with 176 points to Ferrari’s 119. Antonelli started on pole but didn’t lead out of Turn 1 due to another slow start and lock-up. Ferrari’s Leclerc led, having evaded a Max Verstappen challenge that left the Red Bull driver spinning and falling down the order. Antonelli briefly retook the lead on Lap 4, but both Leclerc and Norris got by him soon after. The safety car was deployed on Lap 6 when Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar and Alpine’s Pierre Gasly both crashed in separate incidents. Hadjar clipped the corner in Turn 14, snapping his suspension, and Gasly was clipped and flipped by Racing Bulls’ Liam Lawson while trying to pass on the outside of Turn 17. Lawson also retired under the safety car. Verstappen used the period to swap for hards while everyone else remained out on mediums. The rain arrived on Lap 25, and teams were all over the map to their drivers on whether the rain would be light enough to stay out or heavy enough to box for intermediate tires. The light crowd won out, and so too did Antonelli, who picked off Verstappen for the lead on Lap 29, with Norris close on his heels. In the absence of more rain, it was up to Antonelli to build and maintain his lead over the defending champion. Despite Antonelli’s worries over the gearbox pedals, throttle and steward warnings for track limits, Norris never closed the gap. Behind, Russell and Leclerc dazzled in the last two laps, as Leclerc spun and went wheel-to-wheel with Russell in the final corner. Russell got by for fourth. Verstappen and Russell were summoned to the stewards for causing a collision, as was Leclerc for leaving the track to gain an advantage. The season resumes on May 24 in Montreal, Canada, for the Canadian Grand Prix. For more from Miami, here are our experts, staff writer Madeline Coleman and senior editor Alex Kalinauckas. Mercedes’ start to the 2026 season in Australia, China and Japan was so commanding it looked pretty bulletproof — even as starts were an issue that really helped spice up the racing in those events. In Miami, it was only as good as McLaren and, at times, vulnerable to the upgraded Ferrari and Red Bull too. The Silver Arrows squad is out of sync with the other big teams, as its big early-season upgrade package is coming next time out in Montreal, with only minor new tailpipe and brake upgrades brought to Florida. It gave time away to McLaren by taking a different energy deployment strategy in qualifying — around using more energy in the flowing early corners of the Miami lap — plus didn’t nail its car set-up in the sprint weekend’s only practice session. The sprint race was uncomfortable for Antonelli as he had another bad start alongside Norris on the front row, scraped his way back to fourth, but lost two places for abusing track limits. The Saturday heat was also holding him back when following other cars. Antonelli turned things around in the main race qualifying as Mercedes improved on its energy deployment plan and took an impressive pole ahead of Verstappen. But in the overcast Sunday start, Antonelli was again overcome by Verstappen and Leclerc, only recovering to second early on by Verstappen’s rare mistake and wild spin. From there, however, Antonelli really rescued the weekend for Mercedes — fighting back to the lead and then holding off Norris after the stops. It looked close early in the stint on hards, but Antonelli eventually pulled away, even around what he feared was a gearbox issue and rising tire temperatures. Antonelli’s win has big championship implications even though George Russell recovered to fourth in the main race — fighting Leclerc and Piastri around his early pitstops. Russell doesn’t like the way the tires slide in the corners here, especially in the heat, but this result was another weekend where he couldn’t stop his young teammate’s momentum at the head of the standings. Charles Leclerc’s podium hopes ended on the last lap with a spin, a bump with the wall and a mad dash to the end. The Monegasque driver started the race strong, managing to stay out of trouble as Antonelli and Verstappen lunged toward Turn 1 as Leclerc pulled back from being in the middle and tucking into the inside of the corner. Then came the yo-yo racing as Leclerc battled with Antonelli, the two swapping positions as the Mercedes driver would briefly overtake the Ferrari before Leclerc would zip past. Leclerc held onto the lead and took off at the safety car restart. But by Lap 14, Norris took the lead from the Ferrari, and it didn’t take long for Antonelli to do the same, Leclerc running in third. It doesn’t come as a total surprise that the McLaren and Mercedes passed the Ferrari, but a driver mistake is what saw Piastri briefly pass Leclerc, as he made an error at Turn 8 but had enough power to recover third place from the Australian driver. Then came the questionable pit stop. Ferrari opted to pit Leclerc to cover off George Russell, but it was a slow stop, leaving the Mercedes ahead at the exit. Leclerc rejoined P12, and he expressed his displeasure of the call over the radio, saying, “Next time you make a decision, please speak with me. I am here as well.” It became a matter of whether the rain would come. Leclerc picked his way through the pack, getting within 2.1 seconds of Verstappen by Lap 44. Three laps later, Leclerc was right on the Red Bull’s tail, waiting for his moment to strike, and the duo began yo-yo-ing across Lap 47, with Leclerc finally sticking the pass. But then came the last laps. Piastri had begun gaining ground on Leclerc in the closing stages, and on the penultimate lap, the McLaren driver passed the Ferrari for the final podium position. Leclerc tried to fight back but spun on the last lap, managing to largely save the car bar a bump into the wall at the end of the spin. Russell managed to pass Leclerc in the final corners, though not without the two briefly touching wheels. Leclerc’s day ended in sixth, just ahead of teammate Lewis Hamilton. All because of a spin when under pressure. There’s something about McLaren in Miami. After Norris’ breakthrough win here in 2024, after a major aerodynamic upgrade package, the same thing happened immediately here in the sprint race, as Norris was victorious in the weekend’s shorter race. Come the grand prix, Norris was only just denied another win here. But it was a topsy-turvy weekend for the orange squad from there, as Norris went from taking the sprint pole to only starting the main race in fourth. The reason, according to team principal Andrea Stella, was the wind shifting around on Saturday afternoon. As its drivers grappled with the handling issue it caused, their “part-throttle” usage meant their engines suddenly deployed their energy on the back straight, which cost them precious time. But on Sunday, with much lower track temperatures and inclement conditions, the McLaren was transformed again. This time for the better. Norris got another great start and was seen off brutally by Verstappen against the pit wall before he engaged with Antonelli and Leclerc in the early laps. He passed Antonelli just before the safety car period, after which he passed the Ferrari and held the lead to the pitstops — largely ahead of Antonelli. Norris looked solid, but Mercedes’ decisive call to give Antonelli the undercut meant that when McLaren brought Norris in on Lap 27 to take hard tires, the Italian driver was right with Norris at the pit exit and shot through in the following corners. Norris then tracked Antonelli through the second half of the race as the threatened rain held off, but he never got close to making a pass, despite some complaints about track limits. Verstappen’s Sunday didn’t quite go to plan, to say the least. The Dutchman qualified second, looking much more comfortable in the updated Red Bull this weekend. But race day was trickier. He spun in Turn 2 at the start of the race, falling back to ninth. He managed to save the car, though, and avoid damage. But when Isack Hadjar and Pierre Gasly hit the wall in separate incidents, a safety car was deployed, and every team faced the dilemma of whether to pit. Only two drivers did – Cadillac’s Valtteri Bottas and Verstappen. Red Bull fitted him with hard tires, and it now became a matter of whether or not the forecasted storms would stay at bay until the end of the race. Every once in a while, varying rainfall expectations were updated on team radios. If there weren’t a lot of rain, this pit stop would be a genius call by Red Bull, because Verstappen would be able to go to the end of the race on this compound. But if it rained, losing all of those positions and falling to the back half of the grid would be potentially for nothing. Verstappen began picking his way through the grid to get back into points contention and the podium. But he did so in a way that seemed to frustrate some. Carlos Sainz discussed Verstappen’s driving over the radio with his team, and Verstappen is under investigation after the race for possibly crossing the pit exit line. If found to have gone over the line, that would possibly be a five-second time penalty. With 20 laps to go, Verstappen was just over 10 seconds off Norris and in podium contention, running third place and a solid six seconds ahead of Leclerc. But that gap steadily grew as the McLaren and Mercedes pulled away, with the Dutchman just over 17 seconds behind by Lap 45 and under pressure from Leclerc. Verstappen began falling back in the order in those final 10 laps of the race, with Leclerc and Piastri passing him. The Dutchman may have fought the Ferrari driver briefly, but the McLaren slipped past shortly after. Verstappen ended the day fifth. It makes one wonder what a two-stop race would have looked like for him. OUT: Nico Hulkenberg (Audi), Liam Lawson (Racing Bulls), Pierre Gasly (Alpine), Isack Hadjar (Red Bull) Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms