Mercedes
Kimi Antonelli, 1st
"This is a day that I will remember forever! It is for sure the most special win of my career so far. It is the best podium of the season and to see the full pit straight packed with people cheering and showing their support was a dream. The team did an incredible job today; they gave us an amazing car, and I can't say thank you enough to everyone that has supported me and helped get me to this point.
"Even starting P19, I believed that this might be possible. On the first start, I made up a lot of positions and then realised we would get another good chance to gain positions after the red flag. That gave us a good chance, and I felt that I had the speed to fight for the win. We obviously gave up some positions under the Virtual Safety Car, but we had the pace on the Medium tyre to come back through and take the victory."
George Russell, 2nd
"It's frustrating to be so close to victory and not to achieve it but that is racing sometimes. Despite that, it is a brilliant result for the team, and I want to say massive congratulations to Kimi on winning his home race. There are many positives both I and the team will take away from this weekend. We showed great pace all weekend and fought hard throughout.
"The Virtual Safety Car was definitely a moment where the race changed. At the time, no one could have known what the right call was. The team chose to split strategy between the two cars and that was the best decision we could have made. We will never know how the race might have unfolded otherwise but Kimi did an amazing job. We raced each other hard but always with respect, and it was good fun fighting wheel-to-wheel for the win."
Toto Wolff, Head of Mercedes-Benz Motorsport
"That was a phenomenal race by the team and both drivers. To take a 1-2 in Monza is a special feeling and victory will obviously be particularly sweet for Kimi at his home race. Both Kimi and George drove brilliantly and were comfortably faster than the rest of the field. Even though they were battling at moments, they kept it clean and brought home a big points haul which is incredibly valuable at this stage in the championship.
"Kimi's drive was methodical from the very start. He kept his head down, took no risks on both starts and just one-by-one began picking off the cars ahead of him. We didn't think his first set of Medium tyres would go to the end, so the Virtual Safety Car gave him a cheaper stop; his pace was superb to make the strategy work. For George, he ran the conventional strategy but was suffering with some vibrations on his front tyres in the closing stages. That limited his pace slightly, but he still drove strongly throughout to take P2."
Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director
"Today was a well-executed race by the whole team and overall, a strong weekend throughout. Even with Kimi starting near the back, we were confident that he could move forward and potentially fight for the podium. We had done a lot of work to optimise our race pace on Friday and that showed in the Grand Prix. Both Kimi and George were significantly faster than their competitors and that was brilliant to see.
"The decision to either pit or stay out under the Virtual Safety Car was a close one. Ultimately, we decided to split strategies across cars to give ourselves the best chance of victory. Pitting Kimi was different to what most of the top 10 did but enabled us to cover threats from the opposition. At that point, the one-stop looked like the slightly stronger strategy, but Kimi's pace really made the two-stop work. He carved past cars we thought he may struggle to pass; both Kimi and George were incredibly quick but once Kimi had caught, the tyre age offset meant he was able to pass quickly.
"Our pace this weekend has been encouraging. We know we are out of sync with our rivals in terms of updates so to take a 1-2 and increase our lead in the championships is pleasing. We know that Monza is an outlier as a track though and we cannot expect this form to continue into Madrid next week. That will be a much tougher fight; we will once again focus on executing a clean weekend, maximising the package we have and bringing home good points."
