Kimi Antonelli has now raced twice at the Dutch Grand Prix. The first was one of the rare weekends of his rookie season that did not go as expected.Eleventh on the grid, sixteenth at the flag and no points. The second, a year later, was a podium. Few records in this series have been rewritten so quickly, or so completely.
A rookie afternoon at a rookie's nightmare
Zandvoort is a difficult place to learn. The track is narrow, the banking punishes a driver who gets the entry wrong and there is very little margin between a quick lap and the barrier. Qualifying eleventh left him in the worst possible position, just outside the top ten and with nowhere to go on Sunday.
He finished sixteenth. It was the outlier in a season that otherwise established him quickly, and it did not survive contact with his second visit.
A single start was never a record so much as a starting point. The wider picture was that Antonelli had become a front-running driver, and the version of him that returned to Zandvoort in 2026 had very little in common with the one that struggled there in 2025.
2026: sixteenth to second
Antonelli returned to Zandvoort in 2026 leading the World Championship, and drove like it. He qualified third and finished second behind Lando Norris, ahead of teammate George Russell, for his first Dutch Grand Prix podium.
Eighteen points, and a fourteen place swing on his result from twelve months earlier at the same circuit. The 2025 afternoon that looked like a warning now reads as a rookie finding his feet.
Kimi Antonelli's Dutch GP record year by year
Every Dutch Grand Prix start, with the grid slot it came from and what it was worth.
| Season | Grid | Finish | Points | Team |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 11 | P16 | 0 | Mercedes |
| 2026 | 3 | P2 | 18 | Mercedes |
The gap, and how quickly it closed
The first visit brought no points, no podium, no pole and no fastest lap. It was flagged in this series as the entry most likely to be rewritten quickly, because the driver and the car had both moved on considerably. It took exactly one year.
Antonelli's Dutch Grand Prix record is a blank afternoon followed by a podium. Zandvoort caught him early, and it did not get another chance that easy.
