Two black and silver Mercedes cars come out of the trees side by side, so close together that from the grandstand they look like one shape. They stay that way through the green and white kerbs of the chicane, and as they come out of the next section a cloud of dust lifts off the edge of the track beside them. Below the camera, a crowd dressed mostly in red raises phones and arms.

The 12 second clip, shot from the stands at Monza, was posted on September 6, 2026 by @lucassstewart. The text laid over the whole video reads “POV: Kimi and George giving Toto a heart attack at Monza,” and the caption adds the punchline: “Toto aged approximately 10 years in 3 seconds.”

Formula 1’s official driver pages list Kimi Antonelli and George Russell with Mercedes, which fits the first names in the overlay, and Toto is team principal Toto Wolff, who does not appear in the clip. The joke is that the two cars fighting each other this hard both belong to his team.

The footage is shot on a phone over the heads of the crowd. In the first seconds the camera pans across a packed grandstand opposite before picking up the two cars at the chicane, nose to tail and then alongside. It follows them past a big screen and a row of purple advertising boards, the dust rising from the edge of the circuit as they pass, and ends with a wide view down the track, a camera crane swinging above the fans. There is no subtitle or spoken commentary on screen, so what the clip shows is the pictures and the two lines of text.

The clip itself does not show who came out ahead, and the comments do not agree. One commenter wrote that the section went wild “when Kimi came around in the lead after this.” Another wrote that Antonelli going off into the sand was the moment the race was lost. Both are commenters’ accounts, not something the reel settles.

How Passing Works Under the 2026 Rules

A commenter writing in Italian made a point about how passing works this season: that a driver has to wait for the battery to charge before attacking, and then gets passed straight back because the car he overtook still has full energy. That is the commenter’s reading of the racing, but the rules behind it are real.

According to Formula 1’s own guide to the 2026 terms, a driver who is within one second of the car in front at a detection point, nominally the final corner, earns Overtake Mode for the following lap. That gives an extra 0.5 MJ of recharge and a more powerful electrical deployment profile, and it works best on long straights. Separately, any driver can press a Boost button anywhere on the lap to switch the power unit to maximum deployment. The guide adds that wings now open on straights in more zones per circuit, and drivers no longer need to be within a second to open them.

According to the Autodromo Nazionale Monza, the 2026 Italian Grand Prix ran September 4 to 6 as the only Italian round on a 24 race calendar, and the circuit is set to host Formula 1 until 2031.

If You Want to Film It Yourself Next Year

This clip was shot from a grandstand looking across a chicane, with the cars in frame for several seconds. For anyone planning to film from those stands:

• Mark the dates. Monza’s official Grand Prix page lists the 2027 race for September 3 to 5, which it describes as the 98th edition of the Italian Grand Prix.
• Buy through the official route. The circuit links ticket sales to its TicketOne page and publishes a price list on the same page.
• Pick a seat facing a chicane rather than a straight. In this clip the cars are visible for several seconds through the kerbs; on a straight they would be gone in a blink.
• Start filming before the cars arrive. This clip is already rolling on the opposite grandstand when the pair appear.