The making of a champion: How Antonelli became F1's new star in just two years

Hughes’s argument was that Antonelli’s record made the conventional progression through the junior categories look less essential. The special ones, he suggested, could be ready before the usual milestones said they should be.

Mercedes ultimately made the decision Hughes had considered possible. Antonelli would be promoted directly to the team for 2025, with George Russell as his team-mate and benchmark.

The gamble wasn’t that a teenager would arrive as a finished product, but that the qualities already visible in his junior career were exceptional enough to justify accelerating his development.

The title he secured in 2026 is now the ultimate validation of that decision.

But the story of how Antonelli reached the top is more interesting than a simple tale of a prodigy fulfilling his destiny.

His rise began with an assessment made when he was still a child, and it has depended on learning to control the very qualities that first made him stand out.

The boy who wasn’t winning everything

Mercedes’ decision to promote Antonelli was the culmination of a development programme that had begun years before Hamilton announced his exit to Ferrari.

At its centre was Gwen Lagrue, the talent scout who heads the team’s junior programme and had already played a major role in the development of Russell, Esteban Ocon, Alex Albon and other future F1 drivers.

Lagrue first watched Antonelli in 2017, when he was 11. The boy had already attracted attention in karting, but his results were not so overwhelming that they told the whole story.

For a scout accustomed to hearing claims that the next Ayrton Senna had appeared, that distinction mattered.

“When I first met him, he was not dominating because he didn’t have the right equipment,” Lagrue recalled in September’s issue of Motor Sport.

What mattered was how Antonelli performed relative to the machinery available to him, how he responded to setbacks and whether he could recover from a difficult heat rather than allowing frustration to compromise the next one.

Lagrue watched how he raced, but also how he behaved away from the track: how he interacted with his team, how he handled adversity and how he carried himself in the paddock.

The qualities that interested him went beyond lap time.

“With Kimi, I saw almost from day one that I was dealing with a different kid,” Lagrue said. “He was like the Kimi you see today when he was 11.”

Lagrue saw the foundations: speed, commitment, an instinct for overtaking and defence, and an appetite for exploring the limits of a car.

Antonelli was prepared to keep trying where others might accept that they had reached the edge of their capabilities.

The scout also recognised that identifying talent and proving it were two different things. Antonelli needed the right equipment to demonstrate his potential, so Lagrue moved him to Energy Corse, which had a dominant Mini karting package in 2018.

Antonelli flourished, in all conditions. When he moved into the more demanding Junior OK-J category, his adaptation was remarkably quick. According to Lagrue, one of the biggest steps in karting took Antonelli only two sessions to master.

Antonelli learned quickly, remembered what he was told and didn’t instinctively blame his equipment when things went wrong. He also had a feel for the limit that made him particularly effective at bringing tyres up to temperature and extracting performance over a single lap.

Those aren’t always the qualities that make a young driver dominate every weekend, but they are the sort of qualities that can persuade an experienced observer that the results will eventually catch up with the ability.

Mercedes signed Antonelli in 2018, before he formally joined its junior programme in 2019. The team wasn’t simply investing in the driver he was, but committing to the process of making him the driver he might become.

Building the driver

The results soon became difficult to ignore. Antonelli won both the Italian and German F4 championships in 2022, his first full season in cars.

In 2023 he won the Formula Regional Middle East championship and the European Formula Regional title, moving quickly through the categories in which drivers normally build the experience needed for the next step.

His performances weren’t just a matter of outright pace, and wet-weather driving became a particular strength. His victory in F4 at the 2022 Motorsport Games at Paul Ricard with a broken wrist offered an illustration of his determination.

Mercedes was also working on the less visible parts of the development process. Lagrue described a programme that considered the environment around Antonelli, the engineer working with him and the physical coaching he needed.

After karting, Antonelli was relatively weak physically, so Mercedes brought in a physical coach to help him build the necessary strength and preparation. Discipline and the tendency to try too hard to please other people were also areas to address.

His progression was so quick that Mercedes chose to bypass F3 and send him directly into F2 for 2024. That was an unusual decision even before Hamilton’s departure created the possibility of an immediate promotion to the works team.

F2 would be Antonelli’s first genuinely difficult period in single-seater racing. Prema and its rivals were grappling with a new car, and the results didn’t arrive as easily as they had in the junior categories.

Antonelli had to work through problems rather than simply rely on his speed to solve them.

Oliver Bearman, his Prema team-mate, offered a useful reference point, while Antonelli became increasingly involved in finding solutions and leading the team’s efforts.

He eventually won the F2 sprint race at Silverstone in the wet and the feature race at the Hungaroring. At Spa, a bold move on Franco Colapinto through Eau Rouge offered another glimpse of his capacity to combine commitment with car control.

The season hadn’t been the effortless procession some might have expected – he finished a distant sixth in the standings – but it had demonstrated that he could learn through difficulty.

Lagrue later made a broader point about those challenges, saying both the difficult F2 campaign and Antonelli’s rookie F1 season were necessary experiences. They helped turn the raw material Mercedes had identified into a more complete driver.

The F1 gamble

Antonelli’s first official F1 appearance came at Monza in 2024, driving Russell’s Mercedes in the opening practice session. It lasted barely long enough to establish his speed before exposing the risks of his approach.

On his first flying lap, Antonelli went to the top of the timesheets. He returned to the pits to allow his tyres to cool, then headed out for another attack.

Technical director James Allison, watching him place the outside front wheel close to the grass on the approach to the first chicane, turned to Toto Wolff with a warning: “We need to have a conversation with him about the difference between FP1 and Q3.”

Antonelli was braking late, using every available inch of track and applying the power aggressively on the exit of corners. Through Ascari, he was incredibly quick: 190km/h, compared with 179km/h for the next-fastest driver, Lando Norris.

But by the time he reached the approach to Parabolica, his outside tyres had overheated. Under his exceptionally late braking, they gave way, sending him into the barriers and ending the session with substantial damage.

It was a spectacular demonstration of both promise and danger. The speed was real; so was the tendency to push beyond the point at which the car could deliver what he was asking of it.

The following day, Mercedes announced that Antonelli would replace Hamilton for 2025.

The decision was, it goes almost without saying, not made on the promise of one practice session, but nor did the crash go unnoticed.

Mercedes had already been testing him extensively and had spent years watching his development, but Monza encapsulated the dilemma. Antonelli possessed a level of natural speed that was difficult to teach, while the ability to judge precisely when not to use it would have to be learned.

In February 2024, Hughes argued that Antonelli’s junior record made the prospect less far-fetched than it appeared. He compared the situation with the early careers of Max Verstappen and Hamilton, both of whom had challenged assumptions about how much experience a driver needed before joining a top team.

Verstappen had not been the driver he would become when he entered F1, and Hamilton had considerably more car-racing experience than Antonelli would have. But exceptional drivers could justify taking a chance before the conventional milestones had been reached, Hughes argued.

Lagrue’s assessment was similar in spirit, if more directly informed by the work of developing Antonelli. Mercedes made its decision early, leaving time to assess his progress and retain a back-up option if necessary. The team wasn’t blind to the risk, but it decided the potential reward was worth taking it.

The promotion also had a logic beyond Antonelli himself. Russell was already a proven grand prix winner, with years of experience and the ability to provide a reference point for a young team-mate, so Mercedes wasn’t asking Antonelli to lead the team from his first race. It could give him room to learn while measuring his progress against one of the grid’s strongest drivers.

Even so, the scale of the challenge was considerable. Antonelli was being asked to step into the seat vacated by a seven-time world champion, at a team accustomed to fighting for victories and titles, which meant there would be little time to make mistakes away from the spotlight.

A difficult first year

Antonelli’s debut at the 2025 Australian Grand Prix offered an immediate reminder of his ability. Starting 16th in treacherous conditions, he recovered to fourth, overcoming a spin along the way.

He scored points in five of the first six races, and in Miami became the youngest driver to take pole position for an F1 session of any kind when he topped sprint qualifying. His first grand prix podium followed in Canada.

There were signs that the gamble might pay off quickly, but the season was not a straight line from promise to success.

After a good start, Antonelli struggled during the European stretch of the season. Mistakes, retirements and a loss of confidence combined to make the middle of the year far more difficult than the opening races had suggested.

A particularly frustrating period brought the problem into focus. He was under pressure, and the scrutiny that came with his promotion had become another difficult variable to manage.

The issue wasn’t simply that he was inexperienced. He was also acutely conscious of the people who had backed him.

In reflecting on the period the following year, Antonelli admitted that he had allowed the pressure to overwhelm him. He felt he was letting down those who had believed in him, especially Wolff, who had made the decision to promote him.

A meeting with the team after the European season gave him an opportunity to reset. He began to find his way back, and the second half of the year brought stronger performances.

In Brazil, he held off Verstappen; in Las Vegas, he again showed the speed and consistency Mercedes had seen in him. He finished seventh in the championship with 150 points and three podiums.

Those numbers were respectable for a rookie, but the significance of the season lay in the process rather than the final classification.

Antonelli had experienced the limits of instinct and talent. He had to learn how his body and mind responded to pressure, how to conserve energy over a long weekend, and what would help him recover focus after a difficult session or race.

He later described the learning curve as feeling like doing three years’ worth of development in one. The direct promotion to Mercedes had given him an extraordinary opportunity, but it had also placed him under a level of scrutiny and expectation that would have been less intense at a smaller team.

The Monza crash of 2024 had shown how easily raw speed could turn into a mistake. The difficult months of 2025 taught him that the same was true of a season: pushing harder was not always the answer, and confidence could not be recovered simply by demanding more from himself.

That experience is central to understanding the driver who emerged in 2026. Mercedes had not merely waited for Antonelli to become faster. It had given him an environment in which to confront the parts of his game that still needed work.

Beating Russell

When Mercedes promoted Antonelli, Russell was not simply the established driver in the other car. He was the benchmark against whom the teenager’s progress would be judged. The early evidence suggested that Russell had good reason to feel secure.

Antonelli’s rookie season in 2025 was uneven, while Russell was already an accomplished grand prix winner and a leader within the team.

In the opening rounds of 2026, Russell continued to look strong. He had held a raw pace advantage in Melbourne, and that he had also been quicker in China before a Q3 glitch helped Antonelli secure pole and the victory.

The shift began to become clearer in Japan, where Antonelli was genuinely faster for the first time, and then in Miami, where he extended the advantage in qualifying and won under pressure while Russell finished fourth.

Mercedes’ caution was justified, with Wolff refusing to include Antonelli in any conversations about the title, but the Italian continued to increasingly turn potential into results.

After winning in China and Japan, he then added victories in Miami, Canada and Monaco, which he dominated from start to finish in an incredible display around the streets of the principality.

In Canada, the two Mercedes drivers traded the lead through a tense opening phase, briefly making contact at the final chicane before Russell retired with a power-unit problem.

The battle showed that Antonelli was no longer simply learning behind his team-mate. He was prepared to race him hard for a win.

As the season progressed, Antonelli built a championship advantage that Russell couldn’t overturn. The Italian’s victories were not all straightforward, but his memorable home win at Monza, where he took an engine penalty and started from the back of the grid, was one of the highlights of the year.

His title wasn’t won simply because he had the fastest car or because Russell suffered misfortune. It also required him to keep converting opportunities into results across a long season.

Russell, despite the occasional victory, had no real response to Antonelli’s form, and the standings underline the scale of the shift.

Antonelli secured the title with XX points, XX clear of Russell after the XX Grand Prix.

It’s the context and not just the statistics what made Antonelli’s season so striking. In 2025, he was a teenager learning how to cope with the demands of F1. In 2026, he became the driver against whom the rest of the field had to measure its championship ambitions.

The making of a champion

There is a temptation to describe Antonelli’s rise as inevitable.

The titles in karting and junior formulae, the decision to skip F3, the promotion to Mercedes and the string of victories in 2026 can be arranged into a neat sequence of a prodigy fulfilling his destiny.

But that misses an important part of the story: Antonelli’s career has been accelerated by his talent, but the development of his talent has accelerated through setbacks, adjustments and very fast learning.

Lagrue saw qualities in him when he was 11, at a time when his results didn’t fully reflect his potential. Mercedes gave him better equipment and a structured development programme. It invested in his physical preparation, worked on his discipline and helped him move rapidly through the junior categories.

When the results became less convincing in F2, the team saw the value in the learning process rather than simply treating the season as a test he had to pass.

The promotion to F1 was the most conspicuous gamble, and Monza in 2024 showed how exposed Antonelli could be when his instinct to push exceeded his judgement, something extremely common among 18-year-olds, regardless of whether they are F1 drivers or not.

His rookie season revealed how deeply the pressure could affect him.

But the making of a champion was not the elimination of the qualities that made Antonelli exceptional in the first place. It was learning how to deploy them consistently, under pressure, across different tracks, conditions and circumstances.

Antonelli’s commitment and feel for the car were visible when he was a child; what changed was his ability to make them serve the result rather than the pursuit of the limit for its own sake.

His championship is proof that Mercedes’ faith was justified even when it was difficult to defend Antonelli from some of the early criticism.

The team knew it wasn’t promoting a finished champion in 2025, and it’s unlikely it even expected him to be capable of delivering a title in its second season.

Instead, Mercedes promoted a teenager whose speed, feel and appetite for the limit convinced it that he could become one. The remarkable thing is not that Antonelli had to learn along the way, but how much he learned, and how quickly.

The title also changes the way his first season should be understood. The difficult weekends, the loss of confidence and the struggle to meet expectations were not merely obstacles on the road to success, but part of the education that made the championship possible.

Antonelli had to learn that talent could open the door, but that it could not, on its own, carry him through an entire season.

At 20 years and 68 days, he is now a world champion.

The title is the culmination of years of work by the driver and the people who helped shape him and, potentially, only the beginning of what he can achieve.