Sobs and wailing, and neither he nor we could fully explain what someone so youthful had done.
‘Champion of the World,’ Kimi Antonelli was told over the Mercedes radio by his race engineer Peter Bonnington. And the crying started.
For once the tension, he admitted, had got to him this weekend. That is how Antonelli felt going into the Mexico City Grand Prix, an incident-laden one, a controversial one, but one from which he emerged emotional as the youngest winner of the Formula One title in history, at 20 years and 68 days.
Nessun Dorma played after he was hailed on the podium, for he was also the first Italian to achieve the feat since Alberto Ascari in 1953, and the operatic master Puccini bowed his knee.
Then, having finished third on the day, behind winner Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton, those pair of giants, with 11 titles between them, lifted the newest member of their exclusive club on to their shoulders.
This was a few minutes before Antonelli had put his gloved hands inside his helmet and all the lad’s emotions poured out after he crossed the line.
Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton lift the new champion Kimi Antonelli on their shoulders after his third-place finish secured the title at the Mexico GP
Antonelli celebrates becoming the youngest world champion in F1 history
Antonelli embraces his team having secured the title with a third-place finish in Mexico
But he was, agonisingly, made to wait here on Sunday after a high-speed crash involving Valtteri Bottas delayed his route in the hot sunshine and thin air of this sprawling city, the honking horns of its roads a contrast to the calm he has exhibited all season – well, until the end and it was all over.
While Ferrari squabbled – more of which later – the details of Antonelli’s coronation being punctuated by 33 minutes: Bottas’ front left wheel was suddenly half torn away from its hinges, still attached yet askew, and his Cadillac was suddenly transporting him as a passenger, a big snap. It looked like a suspension failure. The race was suspended as the Finn received treatment and the fencing was mended. He hobbled away.
So, a red flag was waved and Antonelli prepared to go through a second dose of lights-out torture from fourth place at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.
A further delay followed when Racing Bull’s Arvid Lindblad was punted into the air in a tussle with McLaren’s Oscar Piastri. A safety car was deployed.
Even from the original start, long before the Bottas mishap, the drama had been set up in the most intriguing way. Antonelli started on the second row alongside Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc with the only two men who could possibly delay his elevation to champion status in front of him, pole-sitter Hamilton and George Russell.
One of the front-two pair had to win or Antonelli was champion. And even then only if he finished outside the top nine in the case of Russell winning, or outside the top 10 if Hamilton were victorious.
It is a massive 1,000 yards into the first corner and experience suggests that pole here is not always the advantage it usually is. Slipstreaming from pursuers had been key in the past here, and highly dramatic, and it raised the question whether Antonelli would try to impose himself at this early point. Or sit back.
He had, as it were, a three-foot putt to win The Open, but in this case a mighty right-hander waited to test his race-craft and nerve.
Antonelli, pictured during the Mexico GP, did enough on the day with a composed drive
Antonelli’s family embraces him after he crossed the finish line to complete his ambition
He looked calm on the grid in the immediate build-up, chatting to his dad Marco under a back umbrella protecting them from the intense heat. He kissed his mother Veronic on the cheek. His little sister Maggie was also in attendance.
The good news for Antonelli is that he was not snared at that opening corner. He held on to fourth position. Verstappen, a past master at that very place and already a five-time winner here, was the big bolter.
Russell fell back to sixth, an emblem of his miserable season. But the real drama was at the front as the two Ferraris tangled at Turn 4, after Leclerc used Russell’s slipstream down the opening straight to press his claims.
They were wheel-to-wheel going into Turn 4. Leclerc went down the outside. The Monegasque could not make the corner and cut across the grass into the lead. They did not quite touch.
Hamilton, who made it around the bend, albeit with a slight wobble, fell back to third. Verstappen cashed in on the internecine squabble to go second. ‘Pushed off by my team-mate,’ complained Hamilton.
The stewards opened their investigation. ‘What is happening about Charles?’ asked Hamilton.
A five-second penalty came Leclerc’s way. Hamilton, who later passed Leclerc at a restart, thought this unfair. He had a point. Leclerc’s questionable lunge had granted him free air at the front. Hamilton asked his pit wall for them to be switched around. This was not so easy because Verstappen was sandwiched between them.
Antonelli is draped in the Italian flag as he takes in the magnitude of his accomplishment
The new world champion receives adulation from the crowd in Mexico City
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Yes, there was self-interest in Hamilton’s comments but it is hard to argue with his logic. Though, as it turned out, once Leclerc had served his penalty Verstappen just jumped him in the pits for the lead.
Russell, meanwhile, had run into Isack Hadjar on the eventful opening lap and sent the Red Bull No2 to the back of the grid. The stewards’ prosecution workload doubled. He was landed with a 10-second penalty while running fifth. It never rains on George’s side of the garage.
Ha, but meanwhile, the boy prince Kimi was running fourth, and Russell, his bag man, was going to fall further behind once he had sat out his punishment, finishing sixth.
A brittle cocoon of calm was created around the likely-to-be champion.
Though teetotal, Antonelli promised a night with family and friends they would ‘remember for ever’. Who could begrudge it? Four races, or four laps of honour, remain.
From error-prone rookie to history maker: How Antonelli became F1’s youngest-ever champion
Kimi Antonelli came from the shadows to take the title, having started the year with question marks that arose last season not over his pace, which was never in doubt, but about errors that punctuated his rookie campaign. He had been significantly outgunned by George Russell in the other Mercedes.
There was also a feeling that he was overexposed too early in a top seat rather than given time to learn his craft at a less visible team, an accusation that was probably true.
The alternative of a year or two at, say, Williams, might have been kinder on his young mind. He was, after all, just 18, and to take up the place vacated by no less than Sir Lewis Hamilton was surely a task for an older head.
Would he bounce back from the pounding? Could he rein in the extravagant ebullience that was the extreme edge of his electric speed? In fairness, Toto Wolff was his ever-supportive boss and put an arm around his slender shoulders to emollient effect.
Antonelli and Russell have been managed by Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff (left)
Wolff, who enlisted Antonelli to Mercedes’ young driver programme aged 12, never wavered in his belief that he had unearthed Hamilton’s rightful heir. He conveyed this conviction to Kimi both privately and publicly.
Still, there were doubts in the paddock. One team principal told me at the start of the season when I asked him for his assessment of Antonelli: ‘Undoubtedly quick but prone to too many mistakes.’
But he has shown himself to be serene in 2026, and especially so for a driver of 20. Think about that. Only 20. There are only a few examples from the past of this kind of precocious brilliance. Stirling Moss secured his landmark win at Goodwood on his 19th birthday in 1948, announcing his gifts to the world. Max Verstappen won his first F1 race in Spain at 18 in 2016. Well, Antonelli can be satisfied at living in that sort of society.
He frankly blew away Russell, who started the season as favourite and full of confidence that his time had come. He duly started in spectacular style in Melbourne with a win there and it looked as if he had only to stay alive to take the title. It was all his for the taking.
A pivotal moment, the most significant of all in my estimation, came in China with Antonelli’s first victory a week after Russell’s Australia. A door opened, just as Russell needed to keep it slammed shut in Antonelli’s face, and from there impetus swung the Italian’s way.
I think Russell, who had won the sprint in China, was psychologically damaged by trailing Antonelli home the next day – five seconds the margin. The usurper had done it from pole, again a first for him. He was to keep his foot to the floor for weeks on end, helped by the good fortune to be driving the grid’s dominant car for the early part of the season. Other teams later caught up.
Antonelli’s first win of the season, in China, may have done the psychological damage to Russell, who trailed him by five seconds
Wins in the next four races – Japan, Miami, Canada and Monaco – poleaxed Russell, who was at a loss over how best to drive his machine. Poor George began by talking a good game, but he gradually realised the dream of a lifetime was slipping away from him.
Yes, he suffered the bigger slices of bad luck, and perhaps there was a slight bias in the team towards Antonelli, not to the extent of sabotage or ill-intent towards Russell, but a natural inclination towards the star they saw as their future hero.
The damage was done by now and Antonelli, skilfully tutored by Lewis Hamilton’s old race engineer Peter ‘Bono’ Bonnington, was always busily aggregating points, there or thereabouts even on his off days.
After three races without a win – including Hamilton’s maiden victory for Ferrari in Barcelona, something of a false dawn – Antonelli triumphed again in Spa. This represented a big swing. Russell and Hamilton collided on the first lap, with Russell eliminated and Hamilton given a five-second penalty.
Antonelli held off Charles Leclerc to stretch his lead over Hamilton to 45 points and over Russell to 50.
Antonelli inherited Lewis Hamilton’s former race engineer Peter ‘Bono’ Bonnington when he came in at Mercedes following the seven-time world champion’s move to Ferrrari
Other highlights? Probably the best was Antonelli’s home win in Monza from the back of the grid after taking a penalty for a change of engine. The car was quick, his new power unit strong, and he was favoured by an agreeable strategy, but it was still a fine comeback drive.
Most of those in the stands would have preferred a Ferrari victory. Their red tops and their banners signified that. There was barely a Mercedes shirt in sight. But, still, this win helped lift Kimi on to a pedestal in his homeland he had yet to reach.
Another milestone in his remarkable championship journey was Russell’s engine blowing up in the closing stages of the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia at the start of last month. That sealed it, basically, even though Antonelli finished second to a resurgent Red Bull of Max Verstappen. Still, the points were ticking up all the time. And his victory in Austin last weekend was a remarkably commanding one.
Now he has clinched the title with four rounds remaining depending on whether the planned concluding races in the Middle East, in Qatar and Abu Dhabi, survive the vicissitudes of war. If they are off, the planned alternative is a finale in Imola.
It would be some party to toast the boy born just 20 miles away in Bologna.
READ: Inside the rise of Kimi Antonelli: How a shock conversation with Mercedes boss Toto Wolff, a close relationship with Bono and hand washing cars at home propelled Italian to F1 history
