MEXICO CITY — Kimi Antonelli looked on in bleary-eyed disbelief. Confetti falling, an Italian flag draped over his shoulders, Luciano Pavarotti’s iconic rendition of “Nessun Dorma” blaring out over the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez. He was Italy’s first F1 world champion since 1953. The youngest the sport has ever seen.
Minutes earlier, Antonelli had spent the final laps of his crowning race watching Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton ahead of him: the two greatest drivers of his lifetime, battling for the win. The two drivers, 11 world titles between them, were among the first to congratulate him once he got out of the car. At the podium ceremony, the pair hoisted him onto their shoulders as a fellow drivers’ champion.
“I will definitely frame the picture,” Antonelli said.
For it was all the stuff of wild dreams, even for a young man who has known for a while that all of his were about to come true.
“It’s just an incredible moment,” he said. “To see so much respect from two incredible drivers who have done the history of the sport is truly special and a moment that will live and will always be remembered. So, yeah, definitely I will frame the picture and put it on the wall of my house so I can see it very well whenever I go in.”
As Verstappen and Hamilton then left the podium to Antonelli, Pavarotti’s legendary tenor poured out from the speakers, just as Antonelli’s Mercedes F1 car slowly rose from below to join him on the raised platform. Antonelli took another second to take it all in. His father, his mother, and his sister were watching on from below. Antonelli again raised the Italian flag, then moved forward to kiss the front of the Mercedes car with which he has crushed the opposition this season. Then, he sat on the front of it and exhaled. Taking it all in again.
In the press conference that followed, ESPN asked Antonelli what it had meant to hear the song.
“It was very emotional for me, because it was a song my grandfather used to listen to, always,” he said. “It was very special to hear that, and I think he…,”
He stopped talking, dropped his head and started to cry.
A moment later, Antonelli managed to continue.
“I think he would be very proud.”
Antonelli eventually laughed, as if embarrassed by his tears.
“I’ve cried way too much today,” he said.
He was right, it had been a day of tears — especially as he ticked through the final laps of the race. The 20-year-old wept for joy after crossing the line, finally releasing the weight of emotion upon winning a championship he’s seemed to be on the brink of for weeks.
“[I was] already the lap before,” Antonelli said. “I think I lost probably two seconds because I was already crying, basically. I couldn’t see clearly ahead. You know, I could see two Ferraris somehow with the tears.
“So, it was very special. A lot of memories went through my mind in that moment — all the memories since karting all the way to here. It was a very special final lap. Then when I crossed the line, I let it all out because it was just achieving one of my biggest dreams. It was very special.”
To understand Antonelli’s remarkable rise, one must understand the family at the center of it — or rather, two families. There is his own, led by his father Marco, who made countless sacrifices to support his son’s racing career, and there is Mercedes, which spotted an undersized 11-year-old go-karting prodigy growing up in Ferrari’s backyard and gambled that he might one day become a world champion. Nine years later, both families were there together to watch that gamble pay off.
“My family made an incredible effort to come just for today because my dad was busy with his rally racing team,” Antonelli said. “He was [at] Mugello [Circuit in Italy], and then they flew Saturday morning and arrived last night.
“I’m very happy to be able to share and witness this moment altogether because my family has made, and they still do, an incredible amount of sacrifices for me. And especially my dad, he has come to basically all the races this year, despite being very busy with his own work, his own job.
“He was the one keeping me grounded, especially after very high moments, but as well he was the one that was always there when I was facing a difficult situation, or I wasn’t feeling the best ahead of a session or ahead of the race. So, yeah, definitely it’s been a big part.”
On the other side of that coin is the race team.
When Hamilton shocked Toto Wolff in January 2024 by announcing he was joining Ferrari in 2025, the Mercedes boss had plenty of interested options to replace the seven-time world champion. Even during the team’s down period in the ground effect era, this was still one of the hottest race seats in town.
Wolff quickly settled on Antonelli, the untested, unproven teenager, to replace the greatest driver the sport has ever seen.
At first, it seemed like the lights might have been too bright, when Antonelli crashed in his first F1 appearance — free practice at Monza later that year — which Wolff later admitted had been a mistake. At times during his rookie season, it again seemed like Antonelli was struggling. He looked lost. He was overdriving and overthinking.
Antonelli himself admitted he has taken considerable satisfaction this year from silencing those who wrote him off a year earlier.
“In many ways it does help to add fuel to the fire, the fact that some people said that I wasn’t belonging to Formula 1, or I wasn’t ready for it,” he said. “Which, at some point last year, probably looked like that. I wasn’t ready for it. But I think last year, being able to experience those moments made me much more ready as well ahead of this year.
“Experiencing really low and difficult situations, high-pressure moments, really helped me to face certain situations this year, and definitely they made me mature a lot as a driver and as a person. And still this year, I’ve had moments where I could have done better, a lot better. So, yeah, it’s just a constant learning process.”
But it’s clear, Mercedes’ ongoing belief in Antonelli has paid dividends. Formula 1’s grid is full of success and failure when it comes to young drivers. On the other end of the spectrum is Red Bull, a team that has cycled through junior drivers at an alarming rate in recent seasons. It was telling that, at no point during Antonelli’s difficult first season, were there ever serious suggestions Mercedes might remove him. Rumors of a Max Verstappen signing lingered as late as midseason, though Wolff’s interest seemingly cooled as soon as he realized he had the next Max Verstappen on the books anyway.
Sunday night, Antonelli paid tribute to the faith Mercedes has showed in him, and boldly declared his belief there’s more to come.
“They were the ones who took the gamble when I was 11, and they were the ones who believed in me all the way, and they still do,” he said. “It’s been a massive privilege to be able to, first of all, race for this team. Hopefully we’ll have much more success in the upcoming years.
“It’s been a big privilege to work with Bono [race engineer Peter Bonnington] and with all the other guys, all the other boys and girls who always come to the track and do their best, because it’s an incredible group, a very unique one and a very united one. And every single one of them has played a massive role in achieving this.”
He arrived in Formula 1 an unproven boy wonder. But as he sat on the shoulders of two accomplished contemporaries on Sunday, Antonelli has elevated to something else: Formula 1’s boy king, the youngest to ever do it — and one with a scary amount of time to accumulate the sort of championships Hamilton and Verstappen can boast, too.
