Kimi Antonelli, the Son of a Father Who Did Not Want Him to Race, Is World Champion at 20

Kimi Antonelli parked his Mercedes at the champion’s board in the Foro Sol stadium section in Mexico City, and Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen hugged him there, along with his father, Marco. Antonelli had finished third in the Mexico City Grand Prix, behind Verstappen and Hamilton, and at 20 years and 68 days old he was Formula 1’s youngest world champion. He was crying when he spoke on the team radio. “We did it. We did it, and we wouldn’t have done it without Mercedes, without my family,” he said. “I’m speechless, and trying to process what happened!”

Marco Antonelli spent about four decades in motorsport without ever getting the break his talent needed. He raced touring cars and GT cars, started 23 Italian Superturismo races in the 1990s without finishing higher than sixth, and in 1993 founded his own team, Antonelli Motorsport, based in San Marino. When his son started showing talent in a kart at five and a half, Marco did not want him to race seriously. The family, he told Sky Sports in Austin the weekend before Mexico, simply could not afford to fund a career all the way to the top. “We’re people who work normally,” he said.

“My dad didn’t want me to race because, unfortunately, when he was racing himself, he had to face this reality: He didn’t have any financial support, and he couldn’t keep going with his racing career,” Kimi told Reuters in Austin. “He didn’t want me to face the same kind of disappointments he had faced back then.” He had been around racing from the start: his mother, Veronica, said he was in the team’s garage at a month old, sleeping in his pram, and Marco once sneaked him into the paddock at Hockenheim. At eight, his father smuggled him into a Formula 1 paddock inside a stack of tyres with an umbrella on top. At ten, sitting on his father’s lap in a Lamborghini Super Trofeo car at Adria, Kimi steered and changed gear while Marco worked the pedals, braking from just under 200mph and catching the car when it snapped into oversteer, and Marco watched the video back and decided, “Maybe he has something special.” The childhood dream was not Formula 1 at all, Marco has said. It was the DTM, the German touring car series his father raced in.

Ferrari came first and almost had him. Massimo Rivola, then head of the Ferrari Driver Academy, spotted Kimi, who tried the academy’s simulator at Maranello at 11 before team principal Maurizio Arrivabene decided he was too young for the programme. A few months later, at the end of 2017, Toto Wolff called, and by 2019 Kimi was in the Mercedes junior programme, which supported him through karting and single-seaters in a way both father and son say the family could never have managed alone. Kimi has described his father as strict in karting, though nowhere near as strict as Jos Verstappen, and said he later understood why and was grateful for it. “My father is like my rock,” he said in Hungary, explaining that they had debriefed together after sessions since his karting days. After Kimi won at Spa in July, on his father’s birthday weekend, one of the first things Marco said was “congrats, but…”, followed by a threat to wring his neck like a chicken if he picked up another needless track-limits warning.

Veronica insisted that racing should not replace school, and Kimi did his homework in team tents while his father managed the team. He passed his driving test only last year. He has moved to San Marino, where he is building a house with plenty of garage space, and he dismissed the suggestion that he might live in Monaco. Asked in Austin how he would reward himself for taking the title, he said, “I don’t know. I’ve got everything I need.” The next dream he has named is his father’s: Marco has never driven a Formula 1 car, and Kimi wants to arrange that, and to race a GT3 car with him next year. “He’s never driven a Formula One car,” Kimi said. “That’s another thing I want for him. But this I need to ask Mercedes.”

Marco had flown to Mexico on Friday evening with Veronica and their younger daughter, Maggie, after returning to Italy following Kimi’s win in Austin to support his own team at the Italian GT Endurance finale at Mugello. Guy Albag and Lorenzo Ferrari had taken pole position in the team’s number 64 Mercedes-AMG GT3 and led the championship by 13 points, needing 20 points from the three-hour race to be sure of the title. On Sunday, Lorenzo Ferrari was tapped into a spin by a slower car while overtaking, ended up in the gravel, and the car lost two laps. Alessandro Balzan and Dylan Medler took the title for Rinaldi Racing while Marco was in Mexico City.

Antonelli had missed Thursday’s media day with a viral illness. He arrived in the paddock on Friday still tired. He qualified fifth, 0.193 seconds behind Hamilton on pole, and started fourth after Verstappen’s grid penalty. Hamilton’s pole lap, 1:16.514, beat George Russell by nine thousandths. Charles Leclerc took the lead from Hamilton at the start and cut the track at Turn 4, earning a five-second penalty. Verstappen took control at the pit stops. A heavy crash for Valtteri Bottas, whose Cadillac suffered a suspension failure at Turn 1, stopped the race for barrier repairs. A late safety car after Arvid Lindblad crashed while battling Oscar Piastri gave Hamilton one more chance at Verstappen, and Verstappen held on for his third win of the season. Antonelli had needed only ninth place. He finished third. Mercedes did not clinch the constructors’ championship, which goes on to Brazil.

Formula 1 had asked the FIA, according to Sport Bild, to relax tradition so the championship trophy could be brought to Mexico for photographs with a new champion. The FIA refused, and only a digital image of the trophy was planned for the podium. The real trophy will be presented at the FIA’s prize-giving ceremony in Shanghai in December. On the podium in Mexico, Hamilton and Verstappen lifted Antonelli onto their shoulders. Wolff had said in Austin that Kimi came to his office before the race, sat on the sofa and said, “I’m going to enjoy this one. And isn’t it funny, I’m not thinking at all about the championship.” Lando Norris, the outgoing champion, said after the race that Antonelli deserved more credit for an “insane job”, having beaten Russell, a team-mate in the sport far longer than him.

Italy had waited 73 years for a third champion. Giuseppe Farina won the first championship in 1950, Alberto Ascari won in 1952 and 1953, and no Italian won again until Antonelli. He had already ended one part of that wait at Monza this year, becoming the first Italian to win the Italian Grand Prix since 1966. The age record he took from Sebastian Vettel had stood for 16 years: Vettel was 23 years and 134 days old when he won his first title in 2010, and only four drivers in 76 championships had won a title before turning 25. Antonelli won nine races in 2026, including five in a row from China to Monaco, and he took the championship lead in Japan. He arrived in Mexico 123 points clear of Russell, and he left it 119 clear of Verstappen.

“Il più giovane campione del mondo è BOLOGNESE !!!!”, wrote Denise710s on X in Italian in the early hours of Monday morning, meaning the youngest world champion is from Bologna. Tóth Csaba, replying to a Mercedes post, wrote in Italian that it was an incredible story “fatta di talento, sacrifici e determinazione”, made of talent, sacrifices and determination, and congratulated “Andrea Kimi Antonelli” for writing an unforgettable page of Formula 1 history. A third fan, writing in Portuguese, said they had wanted to drink in honour of “menino kimi”, kid Kimi, but could not because they had made a promise. No official statement mentioned Bologna, the family’s means, or Marco’s team, and the fans’ version was closer to the family’s own account than the record book was. Verstappen’s win moved him to second in the standings, two points ahead of Hamilton, with Russell fourth.