MONACO – Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli won Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix, claiming his fifth win in a row and extending his lead at the top of the drivers’ championship.

The 19-year-old became the youngest driver to win at Monaco, eclipsing the record set by Lewis Hamilton in 2008 by more than three years.

A pair of late safety cars and a red flag threatened to spoil what had been a dominant afternoon for the Italian, though he was able to survive the restarts and come out on top in what was a real race of attrition.

Though he was unable to provide a real change to Antonelli for much of the race, Lewis Hamilton made it back-to-back second-place finishes. Alpine’s Pierre Gasly crossed the line in third but dropped to seventh after a pair of five-second penalties, handing the final podium spot to Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar, who remains under investigation for a red flag infringement.

Max Verstappen started the race just behind polesitter Antonelli, though the four-time world champion saw his chances at a first victory of the season disappear during the start procedure when he was slow to get off the grid, tumbling to the back of the pack.

The Dutchman reported that he had no power and retired from the race after the first lap due to an engine issue.

It was a nightmare race for George Russell, who saw the gap between himself and Antonelli in the championship grow to 68 points and drop to third in the standings, behind Hamilton. The 28-year-old found no way past Hadjar for over 30 laps and, like five other drivers, was hit with a five-second time penalty for speeding in the pit lane.

However, Russell failed to serve his penalty after the first safety car, with Mercedes servicing the car without waiting the required five seconds, and he was given a drive-through penalty, dropping him.

Charles Leclerc was the sixth of seven retirements at his home grand prix, hitting the wall at the final corner after running over a piece of the track that appeared to have broken up, prompting a red flag.

Our experts, Luke Smith and Madeline Coleman, break down the action in Canada.

Kimi Antonelli looks like a champion

Kimi Antonelli has driven all year like someone far beyond his 19 years and not even 30 F1 races. But his dominance in Monaco proved he is more than ready to win this world championship.

Antonelli’s pole lap on Saturday was, in his own words, “magic.” And the same word can easily be used to describe his stunning win on Sunday.

Yes, Verstappen’s failure to get off the line removed one threat, but the Ferraris behind never stood a chance. The numbers advantage many nothing. Antonelli was simply too quick to let the Italian team even try some strategic shenanigans at the front.

Even with the race under control, Antonelli didn’t slow down. His pace remained metronomic and blisteringly quick throughout – it was like watching a great in their prime.

Luck hasn’t been on Russell’s side at points this year, but Monaco was Antonelli’s weekend. The gulf in performance was no clearer than when Antonelli lapped his teammate, running fourth, with more than 20 laps to go.

Antonelli’s 66-point margin at the top of the world championship — more than two race wins, and now with Hamilton in second place — is significant, inflated thanks to Russell’s penalty again. But putting all numbers aside, it’s Antonelli’s level of performance that makes the title look well within his grasp.

To win in Monaco takes every ounce of a driver’s skill. Winning like this in Monaco? That’s the surest sign we are watching a champion in the making.

Luke Smith

Interesting racing remains an existential issue at Monaco (Steven Tee / Getty Images)

Monaco is still a racing snooze

There were questions leading into the Monaco Grand Prix about whether the regulation changes could open up more overtaking opportunities come race day. The layout of the track is quite tight, as the cars navigate through the streets of the principality, and the cars are heavier and larger than the early years of the F1 world championship.

The cars are lighter and smaller compared to last season, and active aerodynamics were disabled, specifically straight mode. The decision was made for safety reasons, given how the layout is quite twisty with very few straights. But this season has seen plenty of yo-yo racing, thanks to the new overtake mode.

But the drivers expressed caution around it. Antonelli said Saturday, “I think very difficult still, unless I wait for one second for the light, or two seconds, or you do a big mistake. I think it’s very difficult.”

Verstappen pointed towards the lower categories, Formula 2 and Formula 3, and how those drivers struggled with overtaking too. He added, “It’s just a little bit the layout, the curvature of some corners, they don’t lend to even have a go because you can easily cover it off. So yeah, it’s hard.”

Sunday’s race showed that is still true. Besides the reliability issues and retirements of Lando Norris, Ollie Bearman, Valtteri Bottas, Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen, a majority of overtakes happened thanks to pit stops. There were some outlier cases, like Alex Albon letting Arvid Lindblad by or time penalties dropping them down the order (like the numerous drivers dinged for speeding in pit lane) or team games like the Williams drivers swapping positions.

But at the end of the day, Antonelli summarized it well on Saturday: “It’s still Monaco.” And maybe that’s okay.

The qualifying product on Saturday makes it one of the most thrilling sessions of the season, given the razor-thin margins of error. The sport has tried different mechanisms to spice up the grand prix, like the mandatory two-stop a couple years ago, but the magic is still in qualifying.

Madeline Coleman

Verstappen’s big step back

Verstappen’s season has been a bit of a rollercoaster, with the Dutchman seeming pleased with his car’s performance at times while not thrilled at others. After qualifying second for the Monaco GP on Saturday, he even admitted he was “quite a bit” surprised by Red Bull’s pace.

“I was confident that we would make some improvements heading into qualifying, but not to fight for pole, honestly,” he said Saturday. “When I jumped into the car, I was like, ‘OK, let’s try and recover a bit. Maybe top five, that was the target.’”

Considering that Sunday’s race is typically a procession in years past, given the tight confines of the layout and overtaking difficulties, Verstappen needed to nail the start and get past Antonelli, who notoriously has struggled to get off the line this season. If the Dutchman could either maintain position or get past the Mercedes at the start, he could’ve been staring down his first F1 win of the year.

But his race was over within a few seconds.

The four-time world champion moved a few meters at the start but didn’t make it far before his car seemed to stall. He pulled out of the way of the other drivers behind him. He said over the radio, “Yep, nice. Completely f— guys, what the f— man?”

Verstappen is slow away from P2 on the grid! 😳

Here’s how the race start unfolded in Monaco! 👇#F1 #MonacoGP pic.twitter.com/yxVElkRWoa

— Formula 1 (@F1) June 7, 2026

Once the rest of the grid passed him, Verstappen managed to start navigating around the track and asked what to do. His race engineer, GianPiero Lambiase, told him to “just bring it home.”

Verstappen pulled into the pits, and the team wheeled him back into the garage. As the rest of the grid kept zooming through the principality, he climbed out of his car, his day over.

He said in the media pen that his “formation lap already felt a bit off.” When it comes to the pre-start, there’s an RPM target (revolutions per minute) that the drivers have to find, and Verstappen said, “It was not going at all. It was just shooting up and down a lot, a bit weird. And then yeah, as soon as I dropped the clutch, that was it.”

He added, “The engine bogged down completely, and after that, the noise that I heard from the engine once I got some power back out of Turn 1 was very bad, so I immediately just lifted off and brought it home.”

Verstappen later commented on how he steered to the left “with the friction of the wheels at that speed,” given he didn’t have any power. “I was just praying that everyone would go right, but everyone luckily reacted very well.”

It was up to Isack Hadjar to bring home points, but it became clear that he was enduring engine issues. He said at one point that “something’s going to explode,” and the team worked to find a solution.

Madeline Coleman

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc reacts in the pits after retiring from the 2026 Monaco Grand Prix. (Yves Herman / POOL / AFP via Getty Images)

More home heartbreak for Leclerc

Going into the Monaco weekend, Ferrari was being talked up as a potential favorite in Monaco given the strength of its chassis. The team has traditionally fared well in Monaco, and with engine power — Mercedes’ big advantage — less decisive, the paddock sensed an opportunity.

It never arrived. As good as the Ferrari starts have been this year, Antonelli comfortably kept his advantage into the first corner before disappearing into the distance. It couldn’t’t get close.

Hamilton’s five-second time penalty for exceeding the pit lane speed limit by 0.1 km/h risked costing him second place to Leclerc, only for Ferrari to double stack its cars in the pits under the safety car. Hamilton served his penalty while Leclerc had to wait and watch behind, leaving the Monegasque to vent his frustration upon returning to the track.

It only got worse for Leclerc with his mistake on the restart, locking up and going straight into the wall — just past the section of broken-up track — to add another chapter to his story of heartbreak around Monaco. He’d struggled under braking all weekend, and fumed on the radio about them after crashing: “I’m not even going to take the blame.”

Hamilton got one last chance to try and challenge Antonelli on the standing restart after the red flag, but was never able to get close enough, leaving him to cross the line behind the Mercedes.

Second was really the best Ferrari could have hoped for in Monaco. But between the gap to Antonelli and Leclerc’s sorry end to the race, the team will hardly leave feeling satisfied with how this went.

Luke Smith

Iran’s World Cup squad touched down at Tijuana International Airport, Mexico, shortly after 5am PST on Sunday to finally begin preparations for this summer’s finals.

Amir Ghalenoei’s side, who start their tournament against New Zealand on June 15, arrived almost four hours late due to a flight delay — a minor inconvenience compared to the uncertainty that has followed them in the build-up to this tournament.

Tijuana sits on Mexico’s northern edge and is directly beside the U.S. border, the airport is a 22-mile drive from downtown San Diego.

The journey across that border, however, is shaping up to be anything but straightforward.

There was a small welcoming party of excited Iran fans, along with media, as players and staff arrived from their flight from Antalya, Turkey, where they had been preparing for the tournament.

The players and officials proceeded to board a bus behind a security gate, waving to cheering fans from the windows as they headed towards their base in Tijuana, where they will spend the tournament adjusting plans with growing logistical concerns.

Iran’s fans lined the exit to Tijuana airport as the team bus drove past (Guillermo Arias / AFP via Getty Images)

In the hours before their arrival in Mexico, reports began to emerge that Iranian officials had been informed the team would be required to enter and leave the United States on the same day as any matches played there.

The claim was made by Iran’s ambassador to Mexico and adds another layer of complexity to the country’s World Cup preparations.

For now, though, Iran are in place and they have arrived for the World Cup in touching distance of the U.S..

“I feel happy to welcome my team,” said Sadegh, an Iranian who waited overnight to see his team land at Tijuana. “I live in Tijuana and this is great to support. I hope we can go as far as possible.

“I’m not a huge soccer fan but it is important to support my team. It doesn’t make sense to mix the World Cup with politics.”

After their opener against New Zealand next Monday, Iran play Belgium on June 21 before concluding their group-stage campaign five days later against Egypt on June 26.

In response to the criticism of the pitch, the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), owners of Lord’s, admitted the surface had fallen short of expectations.

“We recognise that the pitch for this Test has shown more variable bounce than we would have wanted,” said MCC chief executive and secretary Rob Lawson.

“We hold ourselves to the highest standards and are naturally frustrated when a surface falls short of those expectations.

“MCC invests significantly each year in the preparation of the main square at Lord’s, as well as in research, technology and expertise aimed at producing pitches that provide a fair and consistent contest between bat and ball.

“The unusually hot and dry weather during May, followed by wetter conditions in the lead-up to the match, presented a number of challenges in preparing the pitch.”

Lord’s regularly hosts two England men’s Tests each summer and this year will stage its first women’s Test, when England meet India.

After holding the final of the World Test Championship last year, it will also host the final of the Women’s T20 World Cup in July.

In February, the MCC published its cricket strategy, when it stated the “square must be at the forefront of the club’s priorities”.

The MCC has copied a technique of “steaming”, which is used by the All England Lawn Tennis Club for the courts that host Wimbledon.

It involves pumping “200 degrees of steam” seven inches into the turf. The club said the process will result in “positive improvements”, but also admitted the need to re-lay the square. The MCC is also experimenting with drop-in pitches, which are heavily used in Australia.

For England and Stokes, perhaps the manner of victory was not important following their 4-1 defeat on the Ashes tour of Australia.

All of the skipper, coach Brendon McCullum and director of cricket Rob Key remained in their posts despite the heavy loss down under.

And Stokes admitted he was aware the increased pressure the management may have come under had England been on the wrong end of another defeat.

“I’m not going to lie, I’m very, very happy that we’ve won this week,” he said. “I knew how big this game was in terms of the result and how it was going to be perceived externally if it didn’t go well.

“I won’t be really happy until I get to share a beer with the boys.

“We’ve won the first game of the summer, it’s great we’ve managed to do it, but we’ve got five more to go. We’re one Test down, and there’s a long way to go still.”