Antonelli Makes It Three From Three in Miami as Norris Closes the Gap

The kid is making history every other Sunday now.

Kimi Antonelli won the 2026 Miami Grand Prix from pole on Sunday afternoon, holding off a hard-charging Lando Norris by 3.264 seconds at the Miami International Autodrome. It's his third consecutive Grand Prix victory of the season — and with it, the 19-year-old Italian becomes the first driver in Formula 1 history to win his first three races from his first three pole positions.

That stat will follow him for the rest of his career.

A Start That Almost Cost Him Everything

For the third weekend in a row, Antonelli's launch from pole was the worst part of his afternoon. As the lights went out, Charles Leclerc fired his Ferrari off the line and squeezed the Mercedes from one side while Max Verstappen attacked from the other. Antonelli locked up into Turn 1 and bailed out across the run-off to avoid contact.

What saved him was Verstappen — who locked up worse, made contact with Leclerc, and spun a full 360 degrees through the field. The Red Bull somehow threaded the gap untouched, but Verstappen was buried in the pack and Antonelli came out of the chaos in P2 behind Leclerc.

Then the Safety Car came out. Two of them, in fact. Isack Hadjar buried his Red Bull in the wall at Turn 15. Pierre Gasly's Alpine was launched onto the tire barrier at Turn 17 after contact with Liam Lawson, who had a gearbox failure and couldn't slow down. Gasly walked away. Lawson and Hadjar were both done for the day, and the race had barely started.

The Long Pull Back to the Front

Once the field went green again, Leclerc led from Antonelli, Norris, Piastri, and a recovering Verstappen who had pitted under the Safety Car for hards. The lead changed hands repeatedly through the middle stint. Antonelli passed Leclerc. Then he made a small error in energy management trying to clear the Ferrari and lost a spot back to Norris.

That's where the race got interesting.

Norris led, Antonelli stalked, and Mercedes pulled the trigger on a massive undercut that put the Italian back in front of the McLaren on track. From there it was a tire management exercise — Antonelli protecting a gearbox he was being told to baby and Norris pushing hard on fresher rubber, hunting in DRS range with under ten laps to go.

He couldn't get it done. Antonelli held the gap at half a second when he needed to, opened it up when Norris pushed too hard, and crossed the line clear.

The Final Lap That Wrecked Leclerc

The other story of the day was Charles Leclerc's last lap. Sitting in P3 with the McLarens and the Mercedes ahead of him, Leclerc started his final lap and immediately went around at Turn 1. He recovered, only to bang wheels with George Russell at Turn 17, and got passed at the line by Verstappen of all people. P3 became P6 in the space of one lap. Brutal.

Oscar Piastri inherited the final podium spot for McLaren. Russell came home P4, Verstappen P5 after a recovery drive that earned him Driver of the Day, and Leclerc dropped to P6 with Lewis Hamilton seventh in the second Ferrari.

Final Results

PosDriverTeamTime

1

Kimi Antonelli

Mercedes

1:33:19.273

2

Lando Norris

McLaren

+3.264s

3

Oscar Piastri

McLaren

+27.092s

4

George Russell

Mercedes

+43.051s

5

Max Verstappen

Red Bull

+43.949s

6

Charles Leclerc

Ferrari

+44.245s

7

Lewis Hamilton

Ferrari

+53.753s

8

Franco Colapinto

Alpine

+61.871s

9

Carlos Sainz

Williams

+82.072s

10

Alexander Albon

Williams

+90.972s

DNFs: Hadjar, Gasly, Lawson, Hulkenberg.

Where the Title Race Stands

Four rounds in, Antonelli is the first driver to crack the 100-point mark in 2026. His Mercedes teammate George Russell sits second at 80, with Leclerc now 37 points back of the lead after Sunday's late spin. Norris's runner-up finish in Miami is his best result of the year and pulls him back into the conversation, but he's still working from a deficit.

In the Constructors', Mercedes extended its lead, with McLaren's double podium pushing them ahead of Ferrari into second.

What's Next

Antonelli, for what it's worth, sounded like a guy who has read a few championship history books before. "This is just the beginning; the road is still long," he said after the race. "We're working super hard, the team is doing an incredible job."

Cool answer. Twenty-point lead. Four races in. Eighteen to go.

The paddock heads to Montreal next for the Canadian Grand Prix on the weekend of May 22-24. If Antonelli wins from pole again, we may have to start thinking about this in a different gear entirely.