Kimi Antonelli took a dominant victory in the Monaco Grand Prix ahead of the Ferrari of Lewis Hamilton after a chaotic ending that featured two safety cars and a red flag.
The 19-year-old Italian’s fifth win in a row, in combination with a dire race for Mercedes team-mate George Russell, who finished 13th and out of the points, puts him in total control of the championship.
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Antonelli leads Hamilton by 66 points, with Russell now down to third, two points further adrift.
Russell dropped to the back from third place because of a drive-through penalty that he had to serve when the field was compressed two laps after the restart.
Pierre Gasly finished third for Alpine, but was immediately dropped to seventh with a penalty for speeding in the pit lane.
That promoted Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar to the final podium position, ahead of McLaren’s Oscar Piastri on the occasion of the team’s 1,000th grand prix.
The madcap ending was one of several key stories, including:
Antonelli’s supreme display to take total control of the championship
Russell’s latest dose of bad luck seemingly killing his title chances
A costly error from Charles Leclerc at his home race – which he refused to accept was his fault
The chaos caused by the track breaking up and an unusually high number of penalties – six – for drivers speeding in the pit lane. Antonelli kept his cool through two race starts – the initial one and the final one after the red flag – to hold the lead off the line for the first time this season and utterly dominate.
An absolute masterclass from Antonelli for his first Monaco win underlined his credentials as the likely world champion this year, even if there are scheduled to be 16 races remaining.
The talk before the race was whether Antonelli could for the first time this year keep his position off the grid.
In fact, he got away well, and instead it was Max Verstappen’s Red Bull alongside him who suffered an engine problem off the line and was passed by the entire field before retiring after limping around the first lap.
That left Hamilton chasing Antonelli but any sense of competition evaporated almost immediately.
(BBCSport)
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