Kimi Antonelli reached new heights at the Monaco Grand Prix, his talent and potential made abundantly clear as he became the race’s youngest winner. The question now in Formula One only six races into the season is increasingly whether anyone can catch the teenager. His rivals are trying to remain upbeat but on current form the Italian is untouchable.
In Monaco pole position is all, and Antonelli delivered it with an outstanding lap acknowledged with no little appreciation by his Mercedes team principal, Toto Wolff, a man not given to hyperbole.
Asked after the race about qualifying, Wolff admitted that Antonelli’s performance, on only his second meeting at Monaco, had taken him aback.
“I thought, this is going to be impossible, seeing Charles [Leclerc] flying into the swimming pool section, that is the fastest lap. Seeing a car coming in there and on the limit sideways,” he said. “Then Max [Verstappen] topped it. Then we were chasing Kimi’s lap, we have the live GPS and it looked like he’s just not going to make it.
“Out of nowhere, the last two corners he made the difference. Looking at the onboard afterwards, it’s unbelievable. It was unbelievable, that lap.”
The 19-year-old driver, in only his second F1 season, had beaten the four-time champion Verstappen into second by four-hundredths and the seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton into third by two-tenths. Neither driver is a mug, and vastly more experienced in Monte Carlo. Both were vanquished.
In the race, Antonelli delivered again. A dominant drive holding his lead from the start was impressive enough but he also had to maintain it through two restarts, one rolling, one standing. If there were nerves at any stage there was no evidence of them. Cold and clinical, Verstappen and Hamilton would recognise only too well the precision execution where Antonelli controlled every moment of jeopardy, of which they are both masters.
Antonelli now leads the championship by 66 points from Hamilton with Russell 68 back. It is no little lead, even with 16 meetings remaining. Yet what was so ominous about his performance in Monaco was it emphasised how swiftly the teenager has adapted to every circumstance and track this year as well as the new cars and regulations. He has five wins on the trot from six races. In his debut season in 2025 he understandably struggled to an extent, racing at the top level in a car which had never mastered the last set of regulations.
A further period of accommodation might have been expected, even as Mercedes have delivered the best car and engine. Yet Antonelli has stepped up with extraordinary alacrity.
“I matured a lot, I feel like last year was a massive learning in the good, [and] especially in the bad moments,” he said in Monaco. “Despite how bad the bad moments were, being able to come away and to reset and actually being able to be back at that good performance was really important for me. That made me grow and also [my] mindset changed a lot compared to last year.”
If he does go on to become a multiple world champion, these are the moments that made him.
Better still, Antonelli is also enormously endearing, still an enthusiastic kid who clearly revels in the thrill of what he is doing, a trait that makes him very likeable. His eyes shine with joy, even when he is still doing the required media rounds – the “job” part of his job – a similarity he shares with the young Hamilton. Such comparisons are only likely to become more frequent as the season, and indeed the Italian’s career, progresses.
If he maintains the same control going forward, he will be hard to beat. Nonetheless, after his teammate George Russell endured another crushing blow finishing 13th in Monaco with penalties, Wolff talked up the British driver. “Formula One is about physics and not mystics,” he said.
“You don’t unlearn how to drive, and you don’t become a miracle wonder driver. I’m not stressed at all for his performances, because we know he’s one of the best.
“Luck swings in your direction, and then sometimes it doesn’t. And it’s not a question of not knowing how to drive – it’s about having a car underneath that you feel confident with, and that you can go fast. That’s the fact.”
At the moment Russell cannot buy an ounce of luck but Antonelli’s run in Monaco was not favoured by fortune, it was a win he earned and deserved. This coming weekend at the Spanish Grand Prix, back on a traditional circuit where the post-upgrade pecking order will be made clear with its medium and fast-speed corners, Mercedes will expect to be on top once more.
Antonelli now has five wins in a row, if anyone is to rein him in they had best make their case at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.
