2026 F1 World Champion Kimi Antonelli had a disappointing first race since taking the sport’s ultimate crown as he finished P5 in the São Paulo GP. Nonetheless, Mercedes did more than enough to seal the Constructors’ Championship on Sunday afternoon.
Starting P2 on the grid thanks to a five-place penalty for George Russell, the 20-year-old got a perfect start and took the lead from Lando Norris immediately.
In the first stint on inters, Antonelli was flying. He built a 7s lead over Norris as the crossover for dry tyres happened. Having pitted on Lap 16, the 2025 World Champion quickly closed on the Mercedes when car #12 responded a tour later.
A terrible few laps at Interlagos takes him out of race winning contention
It all went wrong for Kimi Antonelli over the course of six laps at the 2026 F1 São Paulo GP. First, he spun into Turn 1 on Lap 19, handing the lead to Lando Norris. Running deep and wide into the same corner on 21 and 24 opened the door for Isack Hadjar and Max Verstappen to come through as well.
When he dropped to P4, initially his pace was horrible as flat spotted tyres from the spin and constant complaints about a car issue saw him drop away from the McLaren and both Red Bulls. From Lap 35, however, he got into a much better rhythm and started to close back in on Verstappen and Hadjar.
Once they all had pitted for a second set of softs — apart from George Russell — Antonelli posted the quickest lap of the race and got within a second of Isack Hadjar.
Unfortunately for him, an unsafe release and a complete lack of pace on the second set of inters, albeit in wetter conditions vs the start, left him down in P5 as Mercedes swapped the cars.
Kimi Antonelli very unhappy after missed opportunity at 2026 F1 São Paulo GP
Speaking in the print media pen post-race, the nine-time race winner was proud of Mercedes achieving a ninth Constructors’ Championship.
Nonetheless, Kimi Antonelli could not hide his disappointment and frustration at missing out on a great chance to take a tenth win in F1 2026 at the São Paulo GP.
“Oh yeah, I’m very disappointed for the race. I’m very angry to be fair.
“But I’m gonna put all this aside for now because we clinched the title, we clinched the title for the team and they all deserve it. And I’m very proud to be part of this group and this team who has done and still does so much for me and I’m very happy for them.
“But talking about the race specifically, yeah, very disappointing because, we were on for the win up to that point. Also, on the slick, once I was able to get some temperature I was getting to the rhythm.
“The spin came which is still something I need to look at because I don’t know why I lost the rear so quickly as well, like no warning, nothing. But already when I put the soft [on], I felt something weird with the car.
“We need to check what happened. A shame because we lost the race there.”
