Max Verstappen, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Interlagos, 2025

Andrea Kimi Antonelli admitted he doubted he would be able to keep Max Verstappen behind when he came under attack from the Red Bull driver at the end of the Brazilian Grand Prix.

However he resisted several laps of pressure from the four-times world champion to secure his best grand prix finish to date with second place.

Antonelli said the final laps were “way too stressful” as he and team mate George Russell, both on used medium compound tyres, came under attack from Verstappen, who had a set of new softs. Verstappen passed Russell on lap 62 then drew within DRS range of Antonelli with five laps to go.

“Obviously when Max did the last pit stop and Bono [race engineer Peter Bonnington] told me the gap, I was like […] ‘I might be in trouble’, because he was just nine seconds behind. And obviously, he was on new softs.

“I think in this race he had very strong pace. He did an amazing job coming back and he just put me under a lot of pressure at the end.

“I had to really push the tyre to the limit, and it wasn’t easy. But I think we did our best and I’m really happy with that.”

Antonelli beat Verstappen to the finishing line by less than four tenths of a second on the final lap.

Having suffered a string of poor results at mid-season, including a seven-round run where he only scored points in a single grand prix, Antonelli has experienced an upswing in form. As well as being his best finish to date, second place in Brazil was his fifth score in the last six rounds.

“I’ve had a good run so far,” he acknowledged, “a couple of strong races, and this weekend was the weekend where we put things more together. Which is what I need to do, especially for the team.”

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