Lewis Hamilton had just sprung the surprise of his life on Mercedes. He was off to Ferrari, and so Kimi Antonelli was called in by Toto Wolff, the Austrian team principal who had supported his talent like a second father since he was 12.
One insider remembers the moment vividly. Antonelli was 17-and-a-half at this stage and sitting intently in the team’s factory at Brackley after completing a Formula Three test at Silverstone. He had not even competed in Formula Two, Formula One’s feeder series.
‘Toto told him it could be him in the F1 seat in 2025, and you saw his eyes light up,’ revealed a member of the small group of individuals in the room that day in early February 2024.
‘He was trying to keep it cool all at the same time. He couldn’t quite believe it and at the same instant couldn’t wait to get started.’
So that is how it began in the Midlands of England and has taken Andrea Kimi Antonelli to the madness of Mexico City on the brink of becoming the youngest world champion in history, aged 20, in his second season.
Nine wins have transported him to the cusp. He has barely made a mistake, no signs of yips, and, even on days when he has not dominated, a little luck and a lot of discipline have allowed him to tot up the points, so that he is 123 up with only 125 on the table. It is a foregone conclusion that he will wrap up the title, likely in the thin air here or, if not, in Brazil next weekend.
But what is he like? Little is known of him to the outside world. He is about to become Formula One’s most anonymous champion ever. He is young and fresh on the scene and rewriting the script of the sport: you can’t win in your second year, barely out of school, a teenager until a few months ago!
Antonelli was born in Bologna on August 25, 2006, a few weeks after Michael Schumacher announced his retirement from Ferrari
George Russell, Antonelli’s nearest challenger 123 points back, has had to deal with a gravitational pull towards his rival
He is, to underline the case, three years younger than Sebastian Vettel, still for a few hours at least the youngest title-holder, having triumphed with Red Bull in 2010 – and Seb had the look of a grungy gap-year student existing on $20 a day.
Antonelli was born in Bologna on August 25, 2006. For context, Michael Schumacher had a few weeks earlier announced his retirement from Ferrari. A few months later McLaren confirmed that Hamilton would race for them the next season. By then, Fernando Alonso was on his way to win his second and final title.
Kimi’s father Marco, here with him in Mexico as a quiet support, was a sports car racing driver and is now owner of the AKM Motorsport racing team, based in San Marino, where Antonelli lives. His mother Veronica Pomaro, who once worked for the Italian postal service, helps Marco run his business. Kimi has a younger sister, Maggie.
He was a glitteringly successful karter as a kid and spotted by Mercedes. They got in there fast, just beating Ferrari to his signature because he was officially too young for the Italian team’s academy scheme.
His father had wanted him to be a footballer but he was drawn to motorsport from an early age and idolised Ayrton Senna, watching DVD videos of the great Brazilian. Lionel Messi is another idol.
Aged nine, he first drove a Lamborghini Super Trofeo while his dad operated the pedals. The die was cast. He learned English, motorsport’s lingua franca, during his race weekends, and he now speaks it very well, and added German to his repertoire when he joined Mercedes.
He brings an infectious enthusiasm to the team and there has been a gravitational pull towards him. Poor George Russell, his nearest challenger those 123 points back, has had to deal with that, admired though he is within Mercedes with him also being a protege they enlisted at a young age and invested in.
‘Kimi is a character who needs people around him,’ a Mercedes friend of his told Daily Mail Sport. ‘He drapes himself across whichever colleague is close by. He is very close to his race engineer Bono (Peter Bonnington).
‘He is also a people’s person and has brought a real sense of fun and mischief to the team. It’s impish fun,’ a source said of Antonelli
‘He has one of those personalities that draws people in. He’s simpatico and has a photographic memory for people’s names. He enjoys spending time in the garage and with the car. He treats the car like a living being – touching it and talking to it.
‘But he is also a people’s person and has brought a real sense of fun and mischief to the team. It’s impish fun.’
Since splitting in February after a two-year relationship with Czech Eliska Babickova, a one-time karter, he is single. He is also teetotal.
When he goes back to San Marino, he has a ritual that helps sustain him away from the swirl of high-pressure sport. He hand washes his car, an AMG GT63 Mercedes, which he crashed last year. ‘It is a meditation for him,’ I was told. ‘He does that when he can on a Monday after a race.’
It is a gruelling life in some ways for one so young, with so much of it being spent in the air, getting to and from races. He reckoned that he spent a month on planes last year, albeit a problem alleviated by taking private jets when he can.
The toll was perhaps evident on Thursday when he was excused from media duties due to a virus, a bit of which is going around the paddock. He is back in the car now and doing well enough in practice to suggest he can easily accomplish the ni]nth-place finish he requires to end all doubts he will become the first Italian since Alberto Ascari in 1953 to be crowned champion.
‘There can be challenging moments, times when you lose your privacy because someone has a camera phone and wants to record you when you are out, but I love what I do and I want to keep on in the sport for many years to come,’ he said.
Antonelli smiled, as he is wont to do, a reliable trademark of the ‘impish’ champion presumptive.
