Mexico City – Kimi Antonelli wrapped up the title in style, while Ferrari snatched defeat from the jaws of victory as its two alpha drivers clashed.

Here is PlanetF1.com’s full list of winners and losers from the 2026 Mexico City Grand Prix.

Winners and Losers from the 2026 Mexico City Grand Prix

Winner: Kimi Antonelli

Is there any F1 fan who can’t say they didn’t get a little misty-eyed watching Kimi Antonelli completely overcome by the enormity of the moment as Nessun Dorma boomed out over the Foro Sol, seeing him having to take a seat and stare at the W17, which has written him into the history books?

It’s been an immense season from start to finish for Antonelli, who openly admitted to feeling like he was driving under tension in Mexico, feeling that he wasn’t driving with his usual intensity.

But, given he only needed ninth place, he simply didn’t need that intensity: he calmly picked his way through the race and followed home the race winner Max Verstappen and the nipping-at-his-heels Lewis Hamilton.

It was the most perfectly symbolic podium possible: the last two generational talents there to welcome Antonelli into their midst, and hoist him up high in front of the world – two drivers who have been there, done that, and are now very aware of the threat Antonelli poses.

If that wasn’t enough for him, there was even a special video message from the youngest-record predecessor, Sebastian Vettel, whose 16-year record has been beaten.

Antonelli has silenced all of his critics this year (as Toto Wolff has so gleefully taken every opportunity possible to point out!) and there’s little doubt that the young Italian has given himself the confidence needed to realise that he has the skills to mix it with the very best.

Now it’s time to bask in the occasion, party with his friends and family, and savour the freedom of the remainder of the season, as next year, the few remaining question marks over Antonelli will have to be answered.

As splendid as his 2026 has been, there’s no denying the fact that the circumstances of his teammate’s misfortunes, and the relative lack of competitiveness of rival teams over the first half of the season, in particular, played a part in giving him a cushion which meant he was never put under serious pressure.

In a season-long fight with the likes of an inevitable Max Verstappen, or a rejuvenated Lewis Hamilton, how will Antonelli fare under that type of intensity? At what point do the claws come out, and what type of competitor is Antonelli when things are less rosy?

But these are questions for another day. F1 has welcomed its latest wonder to the upper echelons, and we should all feel very privileged for having witnessed history being written in front of us once again.

Loser: Ferrari

Given that Lewis Hamilton also failed to keep his Ferrari on the track at Turn 4 on the opening lap, what was the intent with Charles Leclerc on his outside? Either Hamilton had made a mistake in battle, or had no qualms about pushing his teammate out wide into the grass.

It was bizarre then that the post-race rhetoric from Hamilton was to so firmly apportion the blame on Leclerc for Ferrari’s fumbling of what could have been a likely victory, although it has to also be pointed out that the Monegasque could have driven with more patience rather than trying to win the race on the opening lap – after all, his biggest mistake was in not giving up the advantage he had gleaned by cutting the corner as a consequence of the incident.

But, so desperate are both men to come out on top of Ferrari’s intra-team battle, that situations like Sunday unfold, and will continue to unfold: Leclerc is the long-term golden boy of Ferrari, and knows there’s little that can be done to rein him in, if that’s even something Fred Vasseur wishes to do.

2026 is the first year since Leclerc’s victory over Vettel that his position as a champion-in-waiting number one type driver has come under serious scrutiny, and it’s thoroughly unsurprising to see that he is willing to sacrifice the greater good of Ferrari’s races rather than allow Hamilton to develop any sort of momentum or optics of being the lead driver.

It’s psychological warfare at its finest, with Leclerc’s charm and likeability hiding the razor-sharp shark that hides underneath the surface. With Hamilton close to the end of his career, Leclerc knows that he can’t be seen to be waiting for his illustrious teammate to leave in order to achieve any sort of potential glory.

But the question really is what Ferrari does about this situation – it’s perhaps the most difficult teammate dynamic on the grid to manage.

“We could have easily had a one-two today. We had the pace to do,” Hamilton said afterwards.

“So we’re going into Turn 4, first and second. If we just held position, I think anything can happen in the race, but when your teammate works against you, and then you lose positions like that, it’s definitely tough.

“So we’ll just talk about it offline, and it’s not really worth saying too much more. We don’t have rules of engagement, and whether or not that will change anything from Charles’ side, I don’t know.

“We’ve just got to figure it out, but something needs to change, for sure.”

Reining in Leclerc and forcing him to play second fiddle to Hamilton may not even be possible under his contract terms, and also risks annoying him to the point of him seeking a new home elsewhere – a loss that would be a big blow to Ferrari’s aspirations once the team, as a whole, comes good.

Hamilton is the proven quantity, but time is against him – nor can it be said that he is a metronome of consistent outperforming of Leclerc. But Ferrari hired him to bring some of the championship nous from Mercedes that Hamilton had learned over the years.

The only issue with that is Hamilton had a subservient teammate for four of his title wins: a dynamic that Ferrari cannot create for him.

It’s a fight between two alpha drivers, with no clear resolution on how to get them to think of the bigger picture – there’s simply no motivation for either to do so.

“When you are one-two at Turn 4, you don’t imagine that you don’t win the race,” Vasseur said afterwards.

“It’s a lot of frustration for me, but I’m not the most important. I think it’s a lot of frustration for the 2,000 people working for the project, and this – I will need time to digest.”

Winner: Max Verstappen

The only man just as happy as Kimi Antonelli after Mexico was undoubtedly Max Verstappen, whose drive from fifth-place on the grid to victory was up there as one of his finest – something that can be said about far too many of his wins.

The Red Bull may not be great at starts, but Verstappen nailed both of his – first to make up places on the run to Turn 1 and then, even more critically, hold off the Ferraris into the same corner upon the restart.

“I just had a very good first lap, let’s say like that,” Verstappen said afterwards.

“And after that, yeah, we had a bit of a different strategy. I do think we lacked a little bit of pace, but we just hung in there, made the right calls at the right time.

“And then, of course, you know, the penalty for Charles put us into the lead, and then you could see they were always staying with me. So, yeah, it was tough. I was sweating at the end to try and, of course, keep Lewis behind.”

In a season where the Red Bull was throwing him off the road on regular occasions throughout the summer, the improvement of the RB22 can only be seen as alarming for his rivals, given the relative continuity on into 2027.

Over the last 10 Grand Prix weekends, Antonelli is still the highest points scorer, but Verstappen would be just 13 points behind – a measure of just how far Red Bull has progressed since the start of the season.

With on-track performance improving, even the occasional scruffy weekend, such as last weekend’s United States Grand Prix, can only be seen as an overall positive as Laurent Mekies’ team works through the snag list of where it’s lacking, and where things need to be tightened up again ahead of the next championship.

More from the Mexico City Grand Prix

Loser: George Russell

Unlike my PlanetF1.com colleague, Mat Coch, I’m going to be a little more lenient on George Russell, despite the fact that I do agree that the British driver could have made the effort to stick around for the team’s celebrations of Kimi Antonelli’s title – Mercedes excused its driver from attending the media pen, resulting in the team earning a €5,000 fine for the breach of protocol for post-race commitments.

It must be pointed out that, before leaving the circuit sharply, Russell did make a point of locating his teammate in parc fermé to pass on his congratulations – his departure was not borne out of a lack of graciousness towards Antonelli.

But the dissolution of Russell’s championship challenge has been a long time in the making, and the point of defeat was an inevitability, giving him plenty of time to prepare, mentally, for this occasion.

While Russell’s individual race was undone, once again, by a technical issue that saw him lose places on the run to Turn 1, the disappointment of his afternoon should have been outweighed by being there as part of his team to celebrate the occasion of Antonelli’s win.

It’s been a year of mental anguish for Russell, no doubt, given the nature by which things have slowly but surely fallen apart for him, and there would likely be no more isolating feeling for Russell than being the ‘outsider’ trying to make jolly with a team celebrating his teammate.

But that’s what being a team is: Oscar Piastri smiled through the pain of his title defeat in Abu Dhabi last season, joining in with Lando Norris and the rest of McLaren despite having had his own title slip through his fingers at the last moment.

It’s possible to empathise with Russell and still believe that he should have stuck around to fulfil his usual duties, no matter how much he wanted to avoid questioning about his year, or his own race of disappointment (which was initially compromised by a deployment issue and exacerbated by a clumsy clash with Isack Hadjar) – the two perspectives aren’t contradictory.

From the highs of Australia and what must have been a firm belief that his time had finally come, this year has been brutal on Russell, and his resilience has been admirable.

But, when the going gets tough, it’s important to continue to show that resilience against every competitor and, indeed, against every circumstance, and, on this occasion, it may have all got a bit too much for him.

With Mexico being a snapshot of his season, having qualified well only to have things go wrong almost immediately due to factors initially outside his control, here’s hoping Russell can rebuild and bounce back strongly in 2027.

Winner: Liam Lawson

Seventh place from the pit lane was a tremendous result for Lawson, who, once again, finished as best of the rest after the usual front-running suspects, although he was promoted two places post-race due to penalties being awarded to Oscar Piastri and Franco Colapinto for different incidents.

The Kiwi had actually had quite a dull first half of the race, remaining close to the back of the pack as progress proved difficult.

Added to that was not pitting under the Virtual Safety Car, pitting just before the full Safety Car, and a dashboard malady that saw his dash register a VSC – resulting in him briefly backing off before realising it wasn’t real.

But a good restart helped him make up some ground and, when Arvid Lindblad and Piastri clashed ahead of him, Lawson was in position to take ninth place on the road before his promotion.

As for Lindblad’s clash with Piastri, it appeared a prime example of a racing incident, although the stewards ruled against Piastri as being the driver more at fault – either way, it left Lindblad out of the race, having looked set for a strong points finish.

Lawson’s great drive, even if some fortune did play a part, is exactly what he needed after the unnecessary – from both drivers – clash with Verstappen in practice.

It led to the unpalatable veiled threats from Verstappen that daring to try to go toe-to-toe with him, even in practice, could have career implications – comments that can’t be seen as being joking in nature, given his position within the organisation.

For Lawson, who didn’t look like he’d done a whole lot wrong, he climbed down to admit it “shouldn’t have happened”, having seemingly become aware that going up against Verstappen might not have been the wisest idea.

With Lawson understood to not have even tried to enter his name in the hat at Cadillac, it’s Racing Bulls or nowhere for 2027, and a drive like what he produced on Sunday was exactly what he needed to try ensuring that scenario comes to pass.

Loser: Aston Martin

There’s little to be said about Aston Martin’s race, given that it was all over by Lap 7 as Honda encountered more problems at the circuit’s high altitude.

“We found that our ERS cooling circuit was under heavier stress than anticipated, and this is why we had to stop the car in different sessions,” Shinato Orihara explained afterwards.

“Despite completing a series of laps during the practice sessions, the issue occurred today and during qualifying yesterday.”

With Fernando Alonso’s patience already tested on Saturday as he gave, by his standards, a short and curt interview with F1’s reporter, he was chattier on Sunday evening, but was still making it clear that Honda needs to have learned its lessons from the difficulties presented in the race.

“A very, very tough first season for the team,” he said.

“But I think days like today, there are hard lessons that we are learning. The whole power unit department is aware of the problems and the issues. A completely new engine next year is currently testing at the dyno, so yeah, I have faith, I have trust in next year because it’s a completely new project, and the car is really going in the right direction, the chassis side.

“Obviously, it’s difficult to say in moments like today, but we all have high hopes for next year, and we still believe that we can fix a lot of the things.”

One has to hope that this optimism is rewarded because, as things stand, there has been precious little sign of overall forward momentum as a package: for every small step forward in performance on the chassis side, the power unit side appears to be suffering more and more issues.

Winner: Ryo Kirakawa

On a weekend in which something dramatic unfolded behind closed doors at Haas, a scenario that the team very evidently doesn’t wish to discuss, it was Ryo Hirakawa who got thrust into the limelight as a rookie driver.

It was an unspectacular weekend for him, as might be expected, and Hirakawa certainly did not have the pace to match Ollie Bearman – the British driver looked set to score points until he was smacked into by Audi’s Nico Hulkenberg after the restart.

But the Japanese driver kept his nose clean throughout, admitting that he went into the race “shaking” and “overwhelmed” by being around the environment.

His concentration on just bringing the car home and gaining some experience paid off: the post-race penalties awarded to Piastri and the two Alpines resulted in Hirakawa being promoted into 10th and a point, with Hirakawa having even found the confidence to overtake the two Williams drivers in the second half of the race.

“There were a lot of things to do today, especially around the start, and Lap 1 – It was not easy, especially here going into Turn 1,” he said.

“You’re thinking about braking points, and you’ve got cars all around you, so I think I took too much margin because my focus was to finish the race as I wanted to learn.

“After that, I was trying to learn from what others were doing, and maybe the first stint was tough, but I learned a lot.

“After the Safety Car, with the soft compound, I had more confidence and, after the last one, I had much more confidence and passed two cars, so I’m happy to finish like that. I need to digest this moment; I’m really happy as today was my dream, so I just want to enjoy this moment.”

It may yet prove to be a short-lived moment, depending on what Haas does from here. With Hirakawa part of the driver line-up set to race at Monza to secure the World Endurance Championship for Toyota, racing in Brazil might fall to Australia’s Jack Doohan, as the team’s other reserve.

Or will the team reach out to Ferrari and attempt to secure Rafa Camara early? Depending on what choice Ayao Komatsu makes for Brazil, Hirakawa may have just completed his one and only Grand Prix – and a fine job he did along the way.