02.11.2026 15:30
Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli became world champion in his second Formula 1 season. The Italian driver, who turned 20 just three months ago, earned the title of Formula 1’s youngest world champion with this achievement. After a tough rookie season, Antonelli secured six pole positions and six victories in the first 11 races this year, surprising everyone with his career transformation.
When Kimi Antonelli was just 10 years old, his father Marco first realized that his son could be an extraordinary racing driver.
The two were at the Adria circuit in northeastern Italy.
Father Marco was a driver for the Lamborghini car team, while Kimi was competing in a karting race.
The end of the day had come, and former racing driver Marco asked his son, “Would you like to try the Lamborghini?” Marco strapped himself and Kimi in with the same seatbelt.
The father would control the accelerator and brake, while his son would control everything else. In an interview with BBC Sport, Marco recalled that day: “Because he was wearing a helmet in front of me, I couldn’t see the track. I could only see the marker boards beside me before each corner.”
He continued: “Step by step, we started going faster, faster, faster. In the end, I pushed the car as if I were alone and reached the braking point at the end of the straight at 320 kilometers per hour, braking very hard and at the limit.”
The car was sliding a lot. Kimi controlled the slide perfectly, then I pressed the accelerator, Kimi brought the slide under control, changed gear and carried on.
He recounted saying at that moment, “Okay, let’s stop, because it has become dangerous now.”
After watching the video of that drive, however, he said he thought, ‘Maybe there is something special about him.’
Kimi Antonelli, who had turned 20 just three months earlier, made his mark on Formula 1 in his second season and became the youngest world champion in the sport’s history.
THE CHILD BORN IN A GARAGE
This is the story of a child whose father said he was “born in a garage.” Marco Antonelli ran a racing car team with his wife Veronica. “When Kimi was 15 days old, he was in the garage, hearing the sound of the engine and smelling the exhaust,” he says.
When Kimi was three, at Christmas, his father Marco brought home a simulator he had bought at the Bologna Motor Show.
Marco remembers, “Kimi wanted to drive the car every evening.”
Seven years later, just as on the day they drove the Lamborghini, in this simulator Kimi would again sit on Marco’s lap and the controls would be shared in the same way.
Because of the difficulties he had experienced throughout his career, Marco Antonelli initially did not want his son to become a racing driver.
“Sometimes you are fast, but you are not in the right position to become a professional driver,” he says. In the 1990s, Marco Antonelli was on the verge of becoming a factory driver in the DTM touring car series, which at the time had a large audience across Europe.
He test-drove for Alfa Romeo, but then the team boss left and the opportunity disappeared. He got another chance at BMW alongside stars of the era such as Roberto Ravaglia and Steve Soper. But the same thing happened again. Marco Antonelli says, “That is why I suffered a lot,” and continues: “And of course I was afraid that my son would experience the same situation again. At first, my son’s passion for motorsport stressed me a great deal.”
When Kimi was five, he tried go-karting for the first time and showed a remarkable talent for racing lines, braking points and vehicle control.
The Antonelli family, which Marco describes as “an ordinary family,” was not in a position to cover the costs required for Kimi to race in every category on the road to Formula 1.
Marco decided that Kimi could cover his training costs by racing in karting and Formula 4. After that, he thought he could put his son in one of the GT cars and that he could become a professional in this way.
But Kimi immediately began to show his difference. He was fast and winning in every category he entered.
By the time Kimi was 11, his name had begun to be heard quickly in motorsport circles. Mercedes heard about him, and the team’s talent scout Gwen Lagrue flew to Italy to watch Kimi.
It was a season in which Antonelli was racing with a car less powerful than those of his rivals. Marco had told Kimi that this would be good for him. He should think not about the result but about how he could improve, and always do his best.
Marco says, “Gwen was very impressed by the strength and driving performance Kimi showed in this category.” He continues, “And perhaps they realized that Kimi was a different kind of child.”
Kimi was now a member of the Mercedes driver academy. Father Marco could stop worrying about money and focus on helping his son reach his full potential.
Mercedes was not the only Formula 1 legend to notice Antonelli’s potential.
Max Verstappen, a four-time world champion and the only other driver to win a Formula 1 race before turning 20, had noticed him.
He says, “Even while he was karting, it was clear that he was one of the standout talents.” At 15, Antonelli was ready to move into car racing, and as final preparation he took part in a few races in the gearbox karting category. He took pole position in his first race. He then went to the world final and again took pole position.
Antonelli then turned fully to car racing. Throughout 2022 he achieved great success in various Formula 4 championships, and the same success was repeated in Formula Regional in 2023.
CHOSEN TO REPLACE HAMILTON
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff thought Antonelli would be their next Formula 1 driver, probably replacing Lewis Hamilton. As seven-time world champion Hamilton approached 40, Wolff was thinking about a transition to the new generation. When the time came in 2023 to negotiate a new contract with Hamilton, Wolff took a firm stance. Hamilton wanted to sign a guaranteed contract of at least two years, while Wolff insisted on a one-year contract.
In the end, they agreed on a contract for 2024 and an option for 2025.
Hamilton decided to evaluate his options and signed to join Ferrari in 2025.
He informed Wolff of this in late January 2024, before the season began.
Wolff immediately called Marco Antonelli to deliver the “big news.”
Marco recounts that Wolff said, “We’ve put Kimi in Formula 1. What do you think?”
He recounted that he replied, “The question you’re asking me is a difficult one. Of course I’m happy that you’re considering Kimi, but are you sure he’s ready?”
The Mercedes team was holding a management meeting. Wolff gathered his senior engineers to inform them of Hamilton’s decision.
The team’s engineering director Andrew Shovlin says, “We were reviewing the options and trying to reach a conclusion fairly quickly.”
“We were all keen to go ahead with Kimi, and we knew it was a bit risky. But it was exciting, and looking at his career up to that point, we thought there was a high chance he would be very good.”
When Wolff called, Antonelli had not yet even driven a Formula 1 car. Mercedes organized a test program lasting more than 20 days with cars several years old at circuits around the world so that he could race in Formula 1 in 2025.
Shovlin and his engineers were immediately impressed by his driving.
“The rate of acceleration was incredible,” says Shovlin. “What you usually see in drivers is that they gradually go a little faster and brake a little later.”
If we compare with the other drivers we had seen driving an F1 car for the first time, the best I had seen up to that point was George Russell. Suddenly we saw someone very similar.
“With Kimi, we did a few test runs to understand how the car behaved and then started driving at the lower and upper limits.”
The other thing you see is the car controls. Even when they push the car to its limits entering a corner, they can control it.
“Similarly, when you look at the mistakes he made, they were mostly errors of judgement or due to inexperience. They were not mistakes caused by a lack of ability.”
Antonelli made one of these mistakes at the 2024 Italian Grand Prix. Wolff decided to give him his first F1 weekend experience in the first practice session at his home circuit, Monza.
It was a spectacular first drive, both in its good and bad aspects.
Antonelli set the fastest time on his first lap. Then he did another lap. Up to that point he was much faster than everyone else, almost flying, but then he had a heavy crash at the final corner, Parabolica.
“No one in the world could have taken a car through that corner at that speed,” says Shovlin. “He had clearly got the idea into his head to do something special, and that was an error of judgement,” he said.
Wolff took Antonelli aside, told him everything was fine and that he should not worry. But the crash left a significant mark on Antonelli.
A TOUGH ROOKIE SEASON
As Antonelli entered his first season, Wolff made clear statements about managing expectations. Wolff says, “I conditioned myself so strongly that I said, ‘There will be both magnificent moments and moments when I want to tear my hair out.’”
There were standout moments, including taking pole position in the sprint race in Miami.
But the middle part of the season, the European races, ended in disappointment. The change in rear suspension design made the car unbalanced and shook his confidence. His speed was not impressive and he made too many mistakes.
“We expected better from him,” says Shovlin.
Marco Antonelli explains: “Mercedes needed a good result after Hamilton. and of course, they needed two cars that always brought points.”
Kimi felt this requirement. The crash at Monza was hard to forget. It created great pressure on him.
Wolff says “there were bright moments,” but then explains that a “really not very good period of nine races” followed.
“Personally, I never had any doubt,” says Wolff. “But other people did. Both inside and outside the team.”
A year after his first appearance in practice, Antonelli crashed again in practice at Monza.
Wolff says, “At that point I said, ‘Kimi, you have to fix this. This is not enough.’” “And he said, ‘I know.’”
Marco Antonelli says that during this period they talked a lot with his son and that Kimi “realised that everything could change.”
“It was a difficult period, but there was light at the end of the tunnel. Step by step he began to trust himself,” he says.
HE TOOK THE SECOND SEASON BY STORM
There was a change after the F1 season left Europe last autumn.
“Suddenly, we felt that we were making really good progress,” says Shovlin.
There were signs towards the end of the year. None of us thought we would see what we have seen this year so far, but we predicted that we would have a good F1 driver.
This year Antonelli has achieved much more than that. He stormed into the season and established a constant superiority over Russell.
With the best car on the track, Antonelli took six pole positions and six victories in the first 11 races, opening up a 50-point lead in the championship.
In the second half of the season, Mercedes lost its dominant position in the face of first McLaren’s and then Red Bull’s strong performances.
But Antonelli remained a constant threat at the front, and at the Italian Grand Prix, where he started 19th because of an engine penalty, he erased his bad memories of Monza with a magnificent victory.
He produced a perfect drive and, with the help of the safety car, caught Russell in the final laps and took a victory that will go down among the legends.
This sudden change in his performance shocked almost everyone.
“We were all surprised,” says Wolff. Marco points out that his son has a “very strong” mentality.
“He did not start with good results in F4 and FRECA, but he managed to rebuild everything and eventually won the championship through a lot of hard work,” he says.
Verstappen also said, “For me, I had no doubt that he would make a leap after a year and race much more consistently.
“This is normal in a driver’s development process. Things can be quite difficult in a rookie season, but right now, of course, he is doing an incredible job.”
Kimi Antonelli praises his father Marco, describing him as his “support.”
Wolff also says the driver has a “typical Italian family.”
“Caring and loving people,” says Wolff: “Kimi stands out for his character, his kindness, his empathy, his charisma and for having the intelligence required to be a racing driver.”
Mercedes is also holding talks with Antonelli this season about controlling his emotions, which have flared up at times. For example, in the sprint race in Canada, the battle between the two Mercedes drivers almost got out of control.
“He just says: ‘I’m young, I’m Italian, what do you expect?’” says Shovlin.
This remark not only reveals Antonelli’s sense of humour but also shows a maturity that would not always be expected from someone so young.
“Actually, he does not fit the typical emotional Italian stereotype. He is very clear about what he needs to do in the car. I do not see too much emotion. I see complete focus, complete concentration,” says Wolff.
To get advice on this matter, Antonelli met tennis legend Roger Federer at Wimbledon this summer.
“We chatted about my races,” says Antonelli. “We talked about how he used to play and about life in general.”
On the subject of pressure, he told me to focus on just one race at a time, to focus on the things I can control, and especially to control the emotions that could cause me to make mistakes.
“Federer’s words reflected something Marco had always tried to instil in his son.”
“We also use this concept in our daily lives in our family,” he says. “We should live each day to the fullest. We should work hard every single day to complete the project in the best way possible.”
We used artificial intelligence to translate this article, the original of which is in English. A BBC journalist checked the translation before publication.
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