By Alan Baldwin
BARCELONA, June 14 (Reuters) - Lewis Hamilton celebrated an emotional and historic first grand prix victory for Ferrari on Sunday to end Kimi Antonelli's five-race sequence of success and become, at 41, Formula One's oldest winner since Australian Jack Brabham in 1970.
The Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix triumph was the Briton's first win since Belgium in 2024 -- 41 races ago when he was at Mercedes -- his record seventh in Spain at the Circuit de Catalunya and 106th of the seven-time world champion's extraordinary career.
Italian Antonelli, the 19-year-old championship leader for Mercedes, retired five laps from the end with an electrical shutdown while in second place and saw his lead over Hamilton slashed to 41 points.
It was his first setback of an otherwise prodigious season and the first defeat of 2026 for Mercedes.
George Russell finished second for Mercedes, after starting on pole and being overtaken by Antonelli late in the race, with McLaren's reigning champion Lando Norris third for his second podium of the year.
Antonelli has 156 points to Hamilton's 115 and Russell's 106 after seven rounds. Mercedes have 262 to Ferrari's 190 in the constructors' standings.
FIRST ALL-BRITISH PODIUM SINCE 1968
"Grazie a tutti a Maranello," Hamilton said over the radio in a heartfelt message of thanks to everyone at the Ferrari factory he joined from Mercedes last year.
"You've helped me achieve this dream and I can't thank you enough. Thanks for everyone pushing so hard back at home. I'm so proud of you."
The win was also a first since 2024 for Ferrari and the first time three British drivers had shared the podium since the 1968 U.S. Grand Prix at Watkins Glen saw Jackie Stewart, Graham Hill and John Surtees sweep the top three places.
Late triple champion Brabham was 43 and 11 months when he took his last F1 victory in South Africa. Hamilton turns 42 next January. In more modern times, Britain's 1992 world champion Nigel Mansell won in Australia in 1994 at 41 and three months.
"I'm just happy in my life, so I'm in a good place. I love doing what I do. There's no greater feeling than racing a Formula One car," said Hamilton, who benefited from a virtual safety car triggered by Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso to make a cheap third stop and come out still ahead on fresh tyres.
"There is a long, long way to go and they (Mercedes) have still got great pace, as you can see. But we are going to keep working and trying to close that gap. It's not over, that's for sure."
Red Bull's four-times world champion Max Verstappen finished fourth with McLaren's Oscar Piastri fifth and Red Bull's Isack Hadjar sixth.
Pierre Gasly and Franco Colapinto were seventh and eighth for Renault-owned Alpine, but the Argentine later lost the place after collecting a 10-second penalty for failing to slow for a yellow flag.
That lifted Racing Bulls pair Liam Lawson and Arvid Lindblad to eighth and ninth with Colapinto 10th.
Hamilton's teammate Charles Leclerc retired after a reported power steering problem while he was heading for a top-five finish.
ALWAYS WONDERED WHAT A FERRARI WIN WOULD FEEL LIKE
Russell had led away cleanly from pole with the top five unchanged after the first lap but Leclerc climbing immediately from 10th to seventh while Hadjar plunged from sixth to 13th after suffering excessive wheelspin.
Hamilton was 3.4 seconds adrift after nine laps but Ferrari went aggressive on their strategy by pitting him for mediums on lap 12 and then again on lap 28.
The race then played into his hands when Alonso, the 44-year-old Spaniard racing at the Barcelona circuit for possibly the last time in F1 given its absence from the calendar next year, pulled over by the side of the track on lap 41 with a battery issue and the virtual safety car was deployed.
Russell and Antonelli had pitted on laps 37 and 38 but Hamilton was able to do so for a third time and save at least 10 seconds.
He took the chequered flag 19.561 seconds clear of Russell as the crowd celebrated one of the sport's most popular wins.
After one of the longest rounds of television interviews, so long that he arrived at the top-three post-race press conference as Russell and Norris were preparing to leave, Hamilton took stock of what he had achieved.
"How do you find the right words to express an emotion that's beyond your wildest dreams?" ventured the Briton, who did win a Saturday sprint in China last year -- a format without podium celebrations and with limited points.
"I watched Ferrari have all that success when I was younger, watching it on TV," said Hamilton, a tear in his eye as he savoured another highlight in a career of so many.
"As I've been racing here (in Formula One), I'd always watched the screens and wondered what it would be like to win in that car. And it's come."
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin; Editing by Toby Chopra and Clare Fallon)
