Kimi Antonelli started Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix in 19th place. By the time the checkered flag came out, he had won his 7th race this year outright and kept his lead atop the drivers’ standings. For most weekends, that alone would be the story out of Monza.
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This wasn’t most weekends.
Behind Antonelli’s win, the Italian Grand Prix turned into one of the most chaotic afternoons of the season, which included a serious Charles Leclerc crash, a heated radio exchange between Ferrari teammates Lewis Hamilton and Leclerc, and a near-miss between McLaren’s Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri that their own team is now reviewing.
Three separate storylines, all from the same 53 laps.
Leclerc’s crash brought back a bad memory
Leclerc’s race ended on Lap 2 at Parabolica, where he lost control of the Ferrari on the exit and hit the barriers at high speed. He had been running fourth, with Piastri close behind, when the crash brought out a red flag that lasted for more than 30 minutes while repairs were completed.
The location added an uncomfortable layer of familiarity. Leclerc also crashed at the same Monza corner six years earlier, making it a second red-flag-triggering accident at Parabolica in the space of two Italian Grands Prix.
Leclerc said after the race that something had felt unusual with the car before the impact, pointing to a possible throttle problem that Ferrari would investigate. He did not present it as a confirmed cause, but said the issue had appeared before he lost control.
“The neck was OK, it was just the vision a little bit at first,” Leclerc said. “The right eye was not showing me great vision, but now it’s all good, so that’s the thing I was most worried of getting off the car.
“Then after that, everything, a bit of pain here and there, which is normal after a crash like this, so nothing more.”
Charles was checked and released by the circuit medical centre, but said he would undergo further precautionary examinations before the Spanish Grand Prix in Madrid. He expected to be fit to race, while making clear that Ferrari and the medical staff would first confirm there were no lingering effects from the crash.
Hamilton’s frustration started before the crash
The Leclerc drama at Parabolica wasn’t even the first Ferrari moment of the day. Ferrari had started in a strong position after a shuffled qualifying order. Pierre Gasly took a surprise pole for Alpine and George Russell lined up alongside him, but Oscar Piastri’s three-place penalty for impeding Liam Lawson promoted Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton to third and fourth. That put the Ferrari teammates side by side on the second row, with little margin for error once the lights went out.
From the start, Hamilton and Leclerc ran side-by-side through the first chicane. Hamilton ran wide onto the gravel on the exit and dropped from fourth to 10th, losing six places in a single sequence. He spent the rest of the race recovering and eventually finished sixth, but the damage to his afternoon was already done.
“Charles pushed me off!” Hamilton said over the radio in the moment.
Sky Sports commentator Martin Brundle saw it differently, arguing Hamilton had no business trying to make the move in the first place, and that Leclerc was always going to respond by giving him nowhere to go.
Hamilton has been open about wanting Ferrari to prioritize his title bid. He left Monza sixth, 76 points behind championship leader Antonelli, after losing ground in a race that began with Ferrari’s two drivers fighting each other rather than the cars ahead.
A moment like this, whoever was at fault, does not help a driver trying to make that case to his own team.
What happened between Norris and Piastri
The third flashpoint came from a different team entirely. McLaren had started with Piastri sixth after his grid penalty and Norris eighth, but both recovered into the fight for fourth by the closing laps.
On Lap 51, Norris tried to go around the outside of Piastri through Curva Grande. Piastri moved left to defend, and Norris ran onto the grass at high speed before keeping the car under control and falling back in behind his teammate.
“He pushed me off. That was very dangerous,” Norris said over the radio.
David Croft described it as a moment that “could have been very, very nasty indeed at high speed.” But Norris took a calmer view after the race, saying he felt the battle had been fair and that his radio complaint came from the perspective of a driver trying to judge a fast-moving situation from inside the car.
Norris still found a way past, taking fourth from Piastri on the final lap with a move into Ascari. Piastri finished fifth, and McLaren left Monza with both cars intact but with another internal decision to examine.
Stella said the team’s initial review made the incident look “much more benign” than it had in the moment. McLaren will still assess whether letting the drivers race cost it time and reduced its chance to attack Verstappen, but Stella said there was no obvious reason for the pit wall to intervene when Norris and Piastri were on the same tyres, of the same age, in equal machinery.
Antonelli’s victory will be remembered as the headline, but Monza also showed how quickly a race can turn when teammates are left to fight each other. Ferrari paid for an early internal clash before Leclerc’s crash ended its hopes altogether, while McLaren avoided the same outcome by a far narrower margin.
For Kimi Antonelli, it was a home win that strengthened his title position. For the teams behind him, it was a reminder that the biggest threat can sometimes be sitting in the other car in the same garage.