Andrea Kimi Antonelli dominated in Texas with a one-stop strategy and heads to Mexico on the brink of the title. Ferrari had the fastest car, Max Verstappen was beaten late on and McLaren struggled for pace.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli won the United States Grand Prix from pole position with just one pit stop, but he was not the fastest driver on track. The future champion’s Sunday ended after 1:35:16.650, with a 13.078-second advantage over Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari, while Andrea Kimi Antonelli will arrive in Mexico City with 365 points compared with George Russell’s 242. Yet the fastest car on Sunday was Ferrari, as the numbers behind the SF-26’s Austin race pace also underline.
Charles Leclerc finished second after recovering from fourth on the grid, with Max Verstappen third and Lewis Hamilton fourth, just over one second behind the Red Bull. George Russell finished eighth and carried a five-second penalty, while McLaren could manage only fifth with Lando Norris and seventh with Oscar Piastri. Here is how that finishing order developed, starting with the conditions on track.
Cooler track and overtaking concentrated in two areas
The race was dry, with the asphalt temperature ranging from 34.6°C to 37.8°C, cooler than during qualifying and the free-practice sessions. Lap by lap, the circuit improved while temperatures dropped: the field’s average lap time fell by more than two seconds from the opening stages to the closing laps, partly because the cars became lighter and partly because grip increased. That evolution was consistent with the strong durability shown by the Hard compound.
There were 46 on-track overtakes, excluding the opening lap, pit stops and periods without green-flag running. Most came in two areas: between Turns 1 and 2, where 34 of them took place, and between Turns 12 and 13 at the end of the back straight. Those locations also produced the two most important passes of the race, with Andrea Kimi Antonelli overtaking Charles Leclerc on lap 32 and Charles Leclerc passing Max Verstappen on lap 49.
Turn 12, where Charles Leclerc overtook Max Verstappen, was also the main track-limits trouble spot, accounting for 17 of the race’s 28 deleted lap times. Four belonged to George Russell between laps 49 and 55, also earning him a black-and-white flag warning. Andrea Kimi Antonelli had only one lap deleted, on lap 35, when his 1:40.062 was removed.
From the start to lap 24: Max Verstappen triggers the strategy battle
The start did not radically change the picture at the front. Isack Hadjar was passed by both Ferraris and dropped from third to fifth, while Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton each gained one position and the order at the very front remained as it had been on the grid. After the first lap, Max Verstappen was 2.36 seconds behind Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Charles Leclerc was 2.90 seconds back. Until the first pit stop, those gaps remained almost unchanged, with Max Verstappen 2.54 seconds behind on lap five and 2.62 seconds behind on lap 12.
Until lap 13, the race developed at a steady pace. Andrea Kimi Antonelli was running on Medium tyres, while Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc were on Softs, with everyone circulating at around 101 seconds per lap. Red Bull then called Max Verstappen in for another set of Soft tyres. That move, made while chasing Andrea Kimi Antonelli, triggered a chain reaction of early stops: Lewis Hamilton pitted on lap 14 and Charles Leclerc followed on lap 15, while Mercedes kept Andrea Kimi Antonelli out until lap 24.
Lap 32: one stop against two
Andrea Kimi Antonelli returned to the track on lap 25 in fourth place, but on fresh Hard tyres he was immediately faster than Charles Leclerc, whose Mediums were approaching the end of their life, by around 0.55 seconds per lap. Max Verstappen stopped again on lap 31, handing the lead to Charles Leclerc. One lap later, Andrea Kimi Antonelli passed the Ferrari driver and was never headed again, confirming Mercedes’ one-stop plan all the way to the chequered flag.
The pit lane explains a large part of the race. One stop cost roughly 21 seconds. Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who stopped only once, lost 20.4 seconds, while Charles Leclerc, Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen all exceeded 41 seconds with two stops. Ferrari executed its four pit stops cleanly, with total pit-lane times ranging from 23.938 to 24.360 seconds, while Max Verstappen appeared extremely unhappy after his slow second stop.
According to Marrafuschi, Pirelli’s motorsport director, the opening stint made the one-stop approach “the most effective solution, as we also saw in the race, albeit with a very small margin”. Ferrari and Mercedes ultimately followed different routes, and the contrast between them became decisive.
Hard tyres decide the closing stages
Between laps 38 and 39, Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton fitted fresh Hard tyres and, for roughly ten laps, both were faster than Andrea Kimi Antonelli. Charles Leclerc had an advantage of more than one second per lap and Lewis Hamilton was almost a second quicker. Between laps 40 and 50, their average times were 98.66 and 98.90 seconds respectively, compared with Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s 99.80.
The Hard tyre also showed very little degradation over long stints, as demonstrated by Oscar Piastri’s 41-lap run and Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s 32 laps on the compound. Over the same phase, Lando Norris, with Hard tyres between 24 and 34 laps old, was 1.6 seconds per lap slower than Charles Leclerc. The compound’s effectiveness was one of the central features of Ferrari’s race, something also evident in the detailed analysis of how the Hard tyres revived the SF-26’s Austin pace.
After his final stop, Charles Leclerc was 21.23 seconds behind Andrea Kimi Antonelli and recovered roughly 0.58 seconds per lap before finishing 13.08 seconds behind. On lap 49 at Turn 12, Charles Leclerc passed Max Verstappen, who was running on 18-lap-old Mediums compared with the Ferrari driver’s 10-lap-old Hards. The Hard tyre therefore rewarded the teams that incorporated it effectively into their race strategies, providing consistent performance and emerging as the compound of the Grand Prix.
A Virtual Safety Car was deployed from laps 51 to 53 because Valtteri Bottas’ Cadillac had stopped on track. It changed nothing for the leaders: Charles Leclerc was 15.64 seconds behind Andrea Kimi Antonelli before the interruption and 15.99 seconds behind afterwards. Lewis Hamilton lost more from the timing. Before the Virtual Safety Car, he had been gaining around 1.2 seconds per lap on Max Verstappen and eventually finished only 1.03 seconds behind. At his previous pace, Lewis Hamilton would have caught Max Verstappen at around lap 55, potentially giving Ferrari a double podium.
Who really had the best race pace?
To understand who was genuinely fastest, every clean lap was compared with the average lap time of the entire grid on the same lap. Charles Leclerc was 1.74 seconds per lap faster than the field average, Lewis Hamilton 1.67 seconds faster, Max Verstappen 1.49 and Andrea Kimi Antonelli 1.30. The Mercedes driver was therefore approximately 0.44 seconds per lap slower than Charles Leclerc by this measure. The underlying lap-time trends can also be explored through the ScuderiaFans F1 Race Pace & Lap Time Comparison.
The balance of performance changed three times during different phases of the race. From laps two to 24, Charles Leclerc, Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton were the strongest. Between laps 25 and 39, Max Verstappen and Andrea Kimi Antonelli led the pace comparison at 1.38 and 1.32 seconds faster than the field average, while the Ferraris, nursing Medium tyres near the end of their life, were at 0.70 and 0.61. From lap 40 onwards, the Ferraris on fresh Hards pulled clear of everyone, recording advantages of 2.02 and 1.90 seconds compared with Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s 0.97.
There was also the theoretical perfect lap, created by combining the best three sectors recorded by any driver. It produced a 1:37.572 and was entirely Ferrari: Lewis Hamilton set the fastest first sector, while Charles Leclerc provided the best second and third sectors. That theoretical time was 0.404 seconds quicker than the actual fastest lap of the race, Charles Leclerc’s 1:37.976 on lap 42. Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s best lap was a 1:39.086, fourth-fastest behind Charles Leclerc, Gabriel Bortoleto and Lewis Hamilton, but only 0.076 seconds away from his own theoretical best, making it an almost perfect lap.
Where Ferrari, Mercedes, Red Bull and McLaren gained and lost time
The performance map compares the four leading teams section by section using the best laps of Charles Leclerc, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Max Verstappen and Lando Norris. Blue represents areas where a team was faster than the four-team average, while orange represents areas where it was slower. The four laps were not completed in identical conditions: Charles Leclerc’s came on three-lap-old Hard tyres with a low fuel load, meaning the pattern of strengths and weaknesses is more significant than the raw differences in seconds.
Ferrari was strong through the corners but struggled on the straights. Its strongest territory was the slow-speed sections, although the SF-26 also remained above average through medium- and high-speed corners. On the straights, however, Ferrari was the weakest of the four teams, losing 0.33 seconds. It was the same weakness already seen in qualifying, where Ferrari lost 0.390 seconds on the straights and which the drivers attributed to the engine. The scale of that disadvantage was also visible when the Ferrari SF-26 faced Mercedes’ straight-line advantage during Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s pass on Charles Leclerc.
The race pace was there, but qualifying performance was not. Ferrari nevertheless scored 30 points compared with Mercedes’ 29, meaning the team that returned to the podium actually collected more points than the constructor that won the race.
Mercedes showed almost the opposite performance profile. It was strong on the straights, where it was 0.21 seconds better than the four-team average, remained competitive through the high-speed corners and lost time through the medium- and slow-speed sections. Mercedes had produced the fastest theoretical team lap in qualifying at 1:33.843, but in the race its pace was comparable to Red Bull’s and around 0.6 seconds per lap slower than Ferrari’s. Mercedes won in Austin because it started ahead, stopped only once and Andrea Kimi Antonelli used fresh Hard tyres to pass Charles Leclerc, not because it had the fastest car.
Red Bull confirmed the pattern already seen in qualifying. It had the strongest straight-line figure, 0.31 seconds better than the average, but one of the weakest performances in the slow corners, where it was 0.40 seconds slower. Max Verstappen led for seven laps, from lap 25 to lap 31, and finished third, while Isack Hadjar was sixth. Red Bull scored 23 points in total.
McLaren ranked fourth on race pace, with an advantage of 0.81 seconds per lap over the overall field average compared with Ferrari’s 1.69. Its performance map contained more orange than blue, with the slow corners at +0.39 seconds and high-speed corners at +0.34 representing its biggest weaknesses.
Driver analysis: from Andrea Kimi Antonelli to Gabriel Bortoleto
Andrea Kimi Antonelli produced a clean race. He lost only one lap time to track limits, finished just 0.076 seconds away from his theoretical best and, once in the lead, was able to run in clean air, the condition in which Mercedes’ one-stop strategy proved competitive. Relative to his grid position, Andrea Kimi Antonelli neither gained nor lost a place, and for a driver winning from pole, that was all that mattered.
Charles Leclerc gained two positions and set the fastest lap of the race. He summed up his Sunday by saying: “Unfortunately we fell short of the victory, which was our objective.” His performance, particularly on the Hard compound, left him convinced that Ferrari can still win again before the end of the 2026 season.
Lewis Hamilton started on already-used Soft tyres and was the most consistent driver in the field, with less variation in his lap times than anyone else. In terms of overall race pace, Lewis Hamilton was only 0.07 seconds per lap behind Charles Leclerc, although he was 0.48 seconds slower on their respective fastest laps. His Austin weekend also reinforced the recurring Ferrari balance issue Lewis Hamilton identified after the United States Grand Prix.
George Russell had the same Mercedes as Andrea Kimi Antonelli but experienced a completely different race. Starting sixth, George Russell ran off the track on the opening lap and gained an advantage, earning a five-second penalty that he served during his lap-22 pit stop. He rejoined in ninth behind the McLarens and could not pass Oscar Piastri. George Russell’s pace was 1.05 seconds per lap worse than Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s by the field-relative measure, with respective figures of 0.25 and 1.30, and during the closing laps George Russell dropped back towards the overall field average.
Lando Norris finished fifth after starting eighth, although his 40-lap Hard-tyre stint temporarily moved him up to second between laps 40 and 46 before he lost three positions. Isack Hadjar started third, was passed by both Ferraris at the start, ran second on lap 16 and lost three positions after his stop. Isack Hadjar eventually finished sixth, with a pace figure of 0.93 compared with Max Verstappen’s 1.49.
Further back, Gabriel Bortoleto recovered eight positions, climbing from 21st to 13th with six overtakes and without being passed once, while Lance Stroll gained seven places after starting from the pit lane. Oliver Bearman lost nine positions, received a 10-second penalty for contact with Pierre Gasly and retired on lap 24. Fernando Alonso dropped four places after a 40-second pit stop, while Carlos Sainz lost six positions following a 33-second stop on lap 17. Franco Colapinto and Valtteri Bottas both retired.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli heads to Mexico on the brink of the title
Andrea Kimi Antonelli will arrive in Mexico City with 365 points, 123 ahead of George Russell and 124 ahead of Lewis Hamilton, with another 125 points available across the final five races. If Andrea Kimi Antonelli finishes inside the top nine, he will become world champion with four races remaining.
The Constructors’ Championship picture is also clearly defined, with Mercedes on 607 points and Ferrari on 474. Ferrari now moves on from a weekend in which the SF-26 showed the strongest Sunday pace but once again paid for what happened earlier in the weekend. The different challenge awaiting the team at altitude is already evident, with Fred Vasseur warning about the cooling and grip demands Ferrari will face at the Mexico City Grand Prix.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli therefore has one hand on the championship, and the Austin picture can be summarised simply. Mercedes won through track position and strategy, Ferrari had the better race pace but paid the price for qualifying, while George Russell complicated his own Sunday on the opening lap. In Mexico, with the effects of altitude and lower aerodynamic load, the battle begins again. The full weekend timings are available in the 2026 Mexico City Grand Prix schedule.
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