Austin, United States (AFP) — Kimi Antonelli claimed his ninth win of the season, but not quite the drivers’ title on Sunday when he drove his Mercedes to a convincing triumph ahead of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc in an intriguing and strategic United States Grand Prix.

The precocious 20-year-old prodigy, seeking to be the youngest champion in F1 history and the first Italian since Alberto Ascari for Ferrari in 1953, came home 13.078 seconds clear of the Monegasque with four-time champion Max Verstappen finishing third for Red Bull.

Antonelli would have become the youngest ever champion, smashing the current record of Sebastian Vettel who was 23 years and 133 days when he won his fist title in 2010, if his Mercedes teammate George Russell had finished lower than eighth and Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton failed to make the top four.

Seven-time champion Hamilton came on strong at the end to take that fourth spot while Russell took eighth which means Antonelli heads to next week’s race in Mexico needing just to finish ninth to claim the two points he need to sew up the title.

“Good job everyone, that’s the result we needed,” said Antonelli on team radio. “Let’s keep pushing.

“The whole team deserved it so much,” he added later. “They put in so much work bringing this new package and finally to see the result is very pleasant.

“It was also a perfect execution from strategy to call for a one-stop and I’m pleased to see it stick.

“We are very close now (to the title) but we will try to finish on a high and hopefully we can clinch it very soon.”

It was a strong showing from both Ferraris who would likely have fared better if they had followed up their dominant performances in practice with better qualifying.

“It was a good race, but unfortunately, we came up just short of our target which was victory, but it’s positive for us,” said Leclerc. “We had good pace.”

– ‘Lucky’ Verstappen –
Verstappen’s third place means that mathematically he is now out of the running for a fifth championship title.

“I think our overall pace was not good enough and the tyres we had available were not the right ones,” said the Dutchman. “But we are still on the podium even if we were a bit lucky at the end.”

World champion Lando Norris of McLaren came in fifth with Isack Hadjar sixth in the second Bull.

Oscar Piastri was seventh for McLaren ahead of Russell, Racing Bulls’ Liam Lawson and Pierre Gasly of Alpine.

Antonelli started the race in pole position and after a clean start already had a 2sec lead by the end of the opening lap, at which point the result never seemed in doubt, mechanical failure and pit stop disasters notwithstanding.

Verstappen was beaten off the start by Leclerc, who started in third, but the four-time world champion wasted no time in reclaiming second spot.

Leclerc, however, overtook him in the latter part of the race and Verstappen was left hanging on for third as Hamilton also closed.

Russell, who has had some terrible luck all season, was hit with a 5sec penalty for running off the track on the opening lap and struggled to get past McLaren’s Oscar Piastri who came in seventh.

Norris, the outgoing champion, was running second until the closing laps when his tyres appeared to give up and he had to settle for fifth with Hadjar sixth in the second Red Bull.

While the other leaders all pitted early, Antonelli stayed out until lap 24 and rejoined fourth but he quickly picked off the cars ahead to reclaim the lead.