Kimi Antonelli: from his father's lap at Adria to leading the Formula 1 title race

Kimi Antonelli, 19, is dominating this year's Formula 1 championship in only his second season and first demonstrated extraordinary car control when, at age 10, he sat on his father Marco's lap to operate the steering and gears of a Lamborghini at the Adria circuit in north-east Italy, Marco tells BBC Sport. The episode — Marco asked his son, "Do you want to try the Lamborghini?" — convinced him his son might be special after a run to 320km/h and Kimi correcting heavy oversteer.

Marco Antonelli says Kimi was literally raised around motorsport: "Kimi from 15 days old was in the garage and heard the sound of the engine and the smell of the exhaust." A Christmas simulator brought home when Kimi was about three led to nightly practice sessions in which the child would insist, "Dad, dad, no sleep, no sleep. I have to drive." Marco, a former driver who narrowly missed factory seats in the 1990s, admits he was initially "very stressed about the passion my son had for motorsport" because of his own unfulfilled career.

Kimi tried a go-kart at five and quickly demonstrated an awareness of racing lines, braking points and car control; the family could not afford every step on the ladder, so Marco funded karting and a year of Formula 4 before planning a conservative GT path. By age 11 Antonelli's name was circulating in racing circles and Mercedes sent scout Gwen Lagrue to Italy to observe him; Marco says, "Gwen was impressed about this condition of power and driving in this category that Kimi did," and that Mercedes later brought him into their driver academy, easing financial pressure on the family.

At 15 Antonelli moved toward cars after two brief, high-profile outings in a geared karting category in which he took pole on debut and then pole at the world final at the end of 2021; he moved full-time into cars in 2022, swept the board in various Formula 4 championships that year and won the Formula Regional European Championship in 2023. His junior honours listed in this profile include winning the 2022 Italian Formula 4 championship, the 2023 Freca title and the European Karting Championships in 2021. "When he was in karting, you could already see he was one of the stand-out talents," says four-time world champion Max Verstappen, who is also described here as the only other teenager to win an F1 race.

Toto Wolff earmarked Antonelli as a future Mercedes driver while negotiating Lewis Hamilton's contract; after Hamilton told Wolff in late January 2024 that he would sign for Ferrari in 2025, Wolff phoned Marco to say, "'We put Kimi in Formula 1.'" Mercedes organised some 20-odd days of testing in older cars to prepare Antonelli for an F1 debut and, according to trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin, "It was how rapidly he would get up to speed." Shovlin compared the initial adaptation to that of George Russell and said mistakes were "often errors of judgement or lack of experience. They weren't run-out-of-talent mistakes." Antonelli's first public F1 outing in 2024 first practice at Monza saw him set the fastest time and then crash at the Parabolica; Shovlin said, "No-one on earth could have got the car around the corner at the speed he was attempting."

Wolff publicly tempered expectations, warning that "there's going to be moments of brilliance and moments where you want to tear your hair out," and the young driver did endure a difficult mid-season spell when a rear suspension change unsettled the car. Marco says Mercedes "needed to have a good result after a period that was not like the Hamilton era" and that "Kimi felt this necessity. The crash in Monza was very tough for him to forget. It created on him a big pressure." A year on from his first Monza practice crash, another incident in Monza practice prompted Wolff to tell him: "Kimi, you've got to turn this around. This is just not good enough," to which Antonelli replied, "I know." Marco adds that they spoke extensively during the slump and that "step by step he started to take confidence."

This season Antonelli has produced rapid improvement in performance and results: he out-qualified George Russell at the second race of the season in Jeddah, took pole for the sprint in Miami, and has recorded six poles and six wins in 11 races so far, sitting 50 points clear in the championship with reliability issues the only thing that might have left him further ahead. The profile notes, "Of the seven F1 race wins by a teenager, Antonelli has six of them." Wolff and Shovlin describe surprise at the scale of his progress — "We were all surprised," Wolff says — while Antonelli cites advice from Roger Federer: "We chatted about my races," and "About pressure, he just told me to focus on one race at a time, just focus on what you can control, and also to control the emotions, especially the ones that can make you do mistakes." Wolff also praised the family, saying, "They are caring, they are loving," and that "Kimi's character, he's gentle, he has empathy, he has charisma, he has the right amount of intelligence for being a racing driver."

Antonelli heads to the Dutch Grand Prix on 23 August with his 50-point championship lead intact; the weekend at Zandvoort will be his final race before he turns 20.