Antonelli seals ninth US GP win from pole as Wolff reveals his pre-race calm

Kimi Antonelli delivered a commanding lights-to-flag victory at the United States Grand Prix on Sunday, leading every lap from pole position at the Circuit of the Americas to claim his ninth win of the 2025 Formula 1 season and move to the brink of the world championship.

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff disclosed after the race that Antonelli had visited his office shortly before the start, radiating a composure that belied the magnitude of the occasion. “He just sneaked into my office before getting ready and said ‘I’m just going to enjoy this right now. And it’s weird, I’m not thinking about the championship at all,’” Wolff recalled. “Isn’t that funny? So he’s on a discovery mission there also in terms of what’s happening to him emotionally and then he just delivered from the beginning to the end — it was exceptional at any time.”

Antonelli held off Max Verstappen at the start despite running the medium tyre, which typically concedes ground off the line against the softer compound. Verstappen’s wheelspin at the launch proved decisive. “On the medium tyre you lose a metre against the soft, but it looked like Max had a lot of wheelspin, so that was good,” Wolff said.

The strategic battle proved equally pivotal. When Verstappen switched to a two-stop strategy in an attempt to undercut the Mercedes, the team held firm and kept Antonelli on a single stop. “We discussed it — that Max could undercut us — and we stayed firm with the decision that the one-stop looks like the fastest strategy,” Wolff explained. “At the moment it’s a scary call, but stick to the data and trust your data.”

The gamble paid off. Wolff noted the one-stop was theoretically eight seconds quicker, and the final margin reflected that calculation.

Lewis Hamilton finished fourth and George Russell eighth, results that kept the title fight mathematically alive but did little to close the gap. Antonelli now leads Russell by 123 points and Hamilton by 124. A top-nine finish in Mexico City next weekend will be enough to seal the championship regardless of what his rivals do.

Mercedes has history in Mexico — Hamilton clinched his fourth and fifth titles there in 2017 and 2018 — though Wolff was careful not to look too far ahead after a race that underlined just how far the Italian teenager has come in his debut season.