'Antonelli and Sinner, Sinner and Antonelli' - Italy should handle its latest sporting hero with care

While Italy is still in mourning over its enduring inability to qualify for World Cups, despite FIFA's insistence on allowing as many nations as feasible, the country is pinning its sporting hopes on individual athletes to carry the torch.

Tennis phenom Jannik Sinner, 24, is one of them, as his four grand slam wins have propelled him to the world number one spot, a position he has traded with Carlos Alcaraz over the past two years and which he reclaimed last month.

Sinner has now found a fratello-in-arms to share the burden of expectation with an even younger prodigy in the shape of teenage Formula 1 world championship leader Kimi Antonelli.

In Miami, Antonelli joined an illustrious club of hat trick scorers: he is one of 23 racers to have won three consecutive grands prix. All but three are world champions. Antonelli also joined Michael Schumacher and Ayrton Senna as the third driver to take his first three poles consecutively, and the third driver to take his first three wins in a row too. He is the first driver in history to combine those two feats into a pole-to-flag triple.

When asked by Autosport after the Miami race where Antonelli's Miami victory ranks among his 28 F1 weekends thus far, Mercedes chief Toto Wolff said: "For me that was his best race so far. And it reminds me of his karting days, of Formula 4. There were no mistakes today."

It's high praise, and the culmination of all the potential Mercedes detected on Antonelli's fast-tracked path up the single-seater ladder. But Antonelli's rapid rise as a torch bearer of a passionate sporting nation could easily have all the ingredients to be a recipe for disaster too.

Antonelli has enjoyed a brilliant start to 2026, but there are still 18 rounds remaining

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That's where the lessons from a rollercoaster debut campaign in 2025 come in, when Antonelli showed flashes of promise but also became overwhelmed with the attention from the outside world at his home rounds in Imola and Monza, while he was struggling for consistency. Antonelli suffered such a slump that Wolff's wisdom of promoting his child prodigy at the age of 18 - replacing Lewis Hamilton, no less - was questioned.

There was no doubt about Antonelli's intrinsic talent, but wasn't that too much, too soon?

Wolff has since been vindicated by the 19-year-old’s strong finish to last season that has now carried over into a much more mature start to 2026. Antonelli has followed Wolff's script to a tee, with a debut season in a mediocre car the perfect learning environment for him to get his rookie blues out of the way, ready to build on those foundations in 2026 with a winning machine.

"The bigger problem is the Italian public now that they are not qualified for football. It's all about Sinner and Antonelli. Antonelli and Sinner. They are two superstars and that is something which we need to contain" Toto Wolff

"In a way, [it's] what we predicted as a team - that we would have ups and downs last season, moments of brilliance, moments where you want to tear your hair out,” said Wolff. “And this year, it's coming together. I don't think that any of us would have expected this kind of run. The car is very good, an engine that is right, but how he has been able to just monetise on that every single week. It is special.”

But much like Mercedes warned against overreaction to Antonelli's difficult middle part of the 2025 campaign last year, it is also keen to avoid expectations veering too far in the opposite direction this time. It's easy to forget the Bologna native is still only 19, and while he is enjoying a hot streak right now, he's destined to keep going through those highs and lows too.

That's easy enough to explain to the F1 community itself. Perhaps less so to Italy's expectant sports fans. "The easier bit is making sure that he keeps both feet on the ground here in the team," Wolff said. "His parents have played a big part in that, to leave him grounded. The bigger problem is the Italian public now that they are not qualified for football. It's all about Sinner and Antonelli. Antonelli and Sinner. They are two superstars and that is something which we need to contain. There's so much request for his time from the media, from sponsors, and it's on us to keep the handbrake on that."

Antonelli is attempting to become Italy's first F1 world champion since Ascari in 1953

Photo by: Clive Rose / Getty Images

"All of us collectively need to keep repeating the message: 'This is a long game.' He has a killer of a team-mate that is extremely fast. The others are catching up in performance.

"He can hopefully win many championships over 10, 15 years. And we don't want to stumble now with these huge expectations that we set on him. Because the moment he has a bad race, which will happen, people will say: 'Oh, maybe Kimi is not the one superstar that we thought.'

“It's a share price that's going up, but it's never going to [keep going] up like this. He's 19 years old. I don't think I was able to take my own flight when I was 19."

There are still question marks over how Antonelli will fare in the heat of an actual F1 title battle against his more experienced team-mate George Russell, who has been gearing up for years for a chance like this.

If anything, Antonelli immediately delivering an ironclad title campaign at the first time of asking would be more surprising than anything else. Russell had an off-weekend at arguably his worst F1 circuit, but after having just witnessed Lando Norris' comeback last year, it would be foolish to write the 28-year-old Briton off after just four weekends as he trails Antonelli by 20 points.

But what's clear is that Antonelli has put rival teams on notice now. His hot start to 2026 is no longer coincidence and, like reigning world champion McLaren, Mercedes is now a team with two aces firing on all cylinders.

Mercedes has enjoyed the perfect start to the new regulation cycle in 2026

Photo by: Alastair Staley / LAT Images via Getty Images

"We should really pay credit to the quality of the driving, the consistency, the speed on both a single lap and in the race, and the overall execution Kimi is showing," McLaren team boss Andrea Stella, fellow Italian, pointed out.

"I would have said after testing that George was in a stronger position, which was the case until Australia, but for some reasons things seem to have turned around. This is thanks to the good work that Kimi must be doing with his engineers and with the people around him."

That support network, from his engineers and mechanics to his Mercedes bosses to the Antonelli family, will handle young Kimi and his early successes with care.

Hopefully, Italy will do too…

Antonelli is now the bookies' favourite for the 2026 F1 title

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