Italy’s next F1 world champion?

To think of the greats of bygone grand prix eras inevitably invites images of the legendary Italian practitioners of the driving art: Tazio Nuvolari, Achille Varzi, Giuseppe Farina and Alberto Ascari, to name but a sparse handful. In the opening seasons of the world championship, the majority of the drivers on the grid hailed from France or Italy. 

And yet just three drivers’ championships have fallen to Italians, the last 73 years ago. In the interim, scant few have come close despite prodigious quantities of Latin flair and emotion.  

Farina was eclipsed by his (slightly) younger Alfa Romeo team-mate Juan Manuel Fangio the year after winning the inaugural world championship, then again by Ascari at Ferrari in 1952 and 1953. Ascari might then have gone on to further greatness but for the consequences of his move to Lancia, whose car for the new formula of 1954 was late, and his fatal accident while testing a sportscar at Monza in the tragic summer of 1955. Equally you could argue that the Second World War put motor racing on pause just as Farina was at his competitive peak. 

Winning context

To understand the context of a championship drought that has lasted nearly 73 years, it’s worth examining how influential Farina and Ascari were in their overlapping eras. With his straight-armed driving style, manipulating the wheel deftly with his fingertips like a concert pianist, Farina commanded his car with the same air of disdainful hauteur that defined his off-track persona.

If his control inputs seemed to have the subtlety of a musical virtuoso compared with rivals who hunched over the wheel and appeared to drive with their elbows, Farina’s on-track manners had a win-or-bust ferocity. Aspiring competitors such as the young Stirling Moss admired and imitated Farina’s imperious deftness with the controls, if not his apparent disregard for the safety of rival drivers.  

For a man seemingly ruled by superstitions – he had to race in a powder blue hat and shirt, and would execute a swift U-turn in the street if he happened across a black cat – Ascari became a calm, ruthlessly analytical machine in the cockpit. In an era when drivers had to be improvisational by necessity, given the weak brakes, skinny tyres and flexy ladder-frame chassis beneath them, Ascari’s consistency and precision, hitting the same lines at each corner lap after lap, was a thing of wonder. 

Ascari was not without his weaknesses. Enzo Ferrari noted that he was at his best when leading from pole position: “Alberto was secure when he was playing the hare. That was when his style was at its most superb. In second place, or further back, he was less sure.” Still, it’s a measure of Ascari’s standing that Fangio – a five-time world champion in such a dangerous era – felt that his 1954 title was devalued by the Milanese’s absence when Lancia’s F1 project fell behind schedule. 

Ascari won the 1952 and 1953 titles

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Why Italy hasn’t managed to supply a driver of similar championship calibre since then is a mystery. Michele Alboreto came closest, in 1985, but so many others have fallen into that category of being great on their day – but those days have not come often enough. Latterly the likes of Giancarlo Fisichella and Jarno Trulli epitomised this: graceful artists behind the wheel, for sure, but not grand prix greats. 

How Antonelli fits in

There will be those who say it’s too early to talk about Kimi Antonelli in the context of historic greats, and some who would opine that he only owes his present position to having the best car on the grid. This is not completely wrong, but neither is it wholly correct. 

Antonelli remains a driver of fascinating contrasts. In the early races of 2025, his maiden grand prix year, he conducted his Mercedes in an excitingly improvisational, often harum-scarum style, frequently teetering on the verge of catastrophe. It was if he were following a template he had laid down when he appeared in an F1 car in FP1 for the first time, at Monza in 2024, and gyrated into the barrier at the Parabolica on his second push lap. Too hard, too soon. 

“Lesson learned” he said after that, but he continued to go boldly, often impetuously. In his very first qualifying session, in Australia, he overcommitted into Turn 6, dipped a wheel into the gravel, breaking his car’s ‘tea tray’. Somehow he contrived to be 0.2s faster than his previous lap but it wasn’t enough to prevent him falling into the elimination zone. On race day, in often gruesome conditions, he raced from 16th on the grid to fourth on the road, a position later reinstated after Mercedes overturned a five-second penalty for an unsafe release in the pitlane. 

The timeline of Antonelli’s graduation to an F1 seat was the chief motivation for the scrutiny. Team boss Toto Wolff took a huge risk promoting Antonelli after just one season in F2 during which the rookie had initially struggled to adapt to the support category’s difficult new chassis

All of this transpired under intense scrutiny, for not only was Antonelli the third-youngest driver ever to make their grand prix debut (aged 18 years and six months, putting him behind only Max Verstappen and Lance Stroll), but he was also taking a seat vacated by seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton. Others might have essayed their debut with more trepidation in these circumstances, but Antonelli – carefully shielded by Mercedes – was happy to apply pedal to metal straight away. 

The timeline of Antonelli’s graduation to an F1 seat was the chief motivation for the scrutiny. Team boss Toto Wolff took a huge risk promoting Antonelli after just one season in F2 during which the rookie had initially struggled to adapt to the support category’s difficult new chassis.

Antonelli finished sixth in his sole F2 season

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

 The original plan had been for two F2 seasons before putatively replacing Hamilton, but Wolff’s hand was forced by the seven-time champion deciding he would not go gently into retirement to suit Mercedes’ long-term plans. Hamilton pulled the plug and did his own deal with Ferrari to stay in F1, leaving Wolff with a more immediate vacancy to fill. 

Much has been made of Wolff’s flirtations with Verstappen, but to bring him aboard would require a massive shift in the team dynamic, even if the negotiations were not just a tactic to remind Red Bull who wears the trousers in Verstappen’s relationship with that team. In the end, Wolff and his young-driver wrangler Gwen Lagrue (recently departed to fulfil that role at Red Bull) had sufficient belief that Antonelli would be the real deal. After all, they’d been watching him since his karting days, when they first swept him into the Mercedes family. 

In the opening stages of last season, Antonelli’s performances appeared to justify Mercedes’ faith in him. He might not have been challenging for wins straight away, like Hamilton in his debut with McLaren in 2007 or Verstappen when elevated to Red Bull mid-way through 2016, but the expectations were different at that point. Mercedes hadn’t produced a car capable of regularly challenging for victories throughout the ground-effect era. 

A maiden podium position in Canada served to confirm Antonelli’s improvement trajectory but then his performances abruptly troughed. The nadir, arguably, came at Spa, that most challenging of drivers’ circuits, where he was eliminated in the first phase of both qualifying sessions and was visibly distraught afterwards. Mercedes belatedly recognised the trigger to be a new rear suspension geometry, which reduced squat and heave at the cost of reducing driver ‘feel’.

If Antonelli’s relative lack of experience was a contributor to this not being recognised immediately, so too was the fact that the new suspension was introduced in Canada, where Antonelli’s team-mate George Russell had won. Lack of feel was less of an issue there since most of the braking is done in a straight line. 

Modern F1 runs to a 24-hour news cycle even when nothing is happening on track and Antonelli’s woes dovetailed with the summer break, a period where ill-informed speculation typically rushes in to fill the vacuum. But there is only so much cotton wool you can wrap around a driver: F1 is a high-pressure business in which you have to perform. Once the new rear suspension was consigned to the bin, Antonelli began writing his own script over the remainder of the season, arguably outperforming his more experienced team-mate at Interlagos and in Las Vegas. 

Antonelli finished seventh in an up-and-down rookie F1 campaign

Photo by: Zak Mauger / LAT Images via Getty Images

“I went through a complicated time, but coming out of it made me mentally stronger, both as a driver and, above all, as a person,” he told Autosport.

“At one point in the season things on track weren’t going the way I wanted, and on top of that rumours started circulating about a possible move to Alpine or Williams – rumours that were never denied. In situations like that, doubts inevitably arise, and there’s a risk of falling into a negative spiral. 

“There is always tension before the start of a qualifying session or a race, but those are the butterflies in your stomach that are actually good for you. It’s important to feel that way because it means you care and that you’re giving everything you have.  

“Overall, though, I’m far less stressed than I was last year. Today I feel I’ve proved something and that I have greater control over the situation. I know I’ll be in Formula 1 next season, whereas last year there was a moment, during the Belgian Grand Prix weekend, when everything around me seemed much darker.” 

"I went through a complicated time, but coming out of it made me mentally stronger"
Kimi Antonelli

Antonelli also faced online death threats after the penultimate round of the season in Qatar, when championship leader Lando Norris passed him in the closing laps and certain people in the Red Bull organisation who should know better accused him of waving Norris through. 

Learning new skills

Unquestionably, Mercedes began 2026 with the best car and power unit package, a state of affairs that has prevailed until mid-season. But the nature of the new regulations has meant being in this position doesn’t translate into outright dominance in a linear fashion. Mercedes currently leads the constructors’ championship, and Antonelli has a strong but not insurmountable lead in the drivers’ standings, but we are not in McLaren-in-1988 territory.

Technical issues with the new-generation power units have led to unexpected retirements, and the contentious phenomenon of ‘yo-yo racing’ has made Mercedes’ dominance less clear-cut. 

Antonelli is on course to become world champion

Photo by: Alastair Staley / LAT Images via Getty Images

Much of the fanbase abhors the intervention of software in the racing but for now it is what it is. Having a near 50:50 ratio of internal combustion engine power to electrical output, combined with a small onboard battery (necessary to save weight) requires a particular set of skills. Since the battery is being depleted and recharged throughout the lap, the FIA has had to impose limits on how the power is deployed so that cars don’t suddenly run out of power halfway down straights, posing a safety problem.

As a consequence of this, the power units are governed by self-learning algorithms, which the teams use to pin down the so-called ‘optimal lap’ – the fastest possible combination of harvesting and deployment. 

Drivers now have to be less improvisational because inconsistencies through the lap skew the algorithm and can result in getting less or more power than expected, in the wrong places. Going too fast around corners can also be punished by losing electrical punch down the straight, depending on circuit configuration.

All of this is counter-intuitive to drivers – but they have to live with it. That means extensive rehearsal in the simulator, practising abstruse minutiae such as throttle position, like a film or TV actor hitting their marks. Antonelli has turned out to be very good at it. 

“During the winter break we worked a lot on that aspect, and it’s something we’re still working on today,” he explained. “We completed an intensive simulator programme, both to develop the car and to better understand this power unit and become familiar with battery management. A large part of what I’m able to do today comes directly from the preparation work that started last year. 

“In some ways I had to adapt, and I think that was true for everyone. But in my case I immediately found a good feeling with the car, unlike what happened last year. I feel much more in control of the situation. I still make the occasional mistake, but overall I’m far more effective.” 

Mercedes deputy team principal Bradley Lord also attributes Antonelli’s growth trajectory this season to the lessons he learned through surviving last year’s brutalities. 

Antonelli has shocked everybody with the step he's made in 2026

Photo by: Manuel Eletto / Getty Images

“I think he found the method that worked for him,” Lord told Autosport, “in order to get the most from the team, understand the effort that is needed ahead of the weekend in order to arrive prepared. Because track time is such a scarce and valuable commodity, particularly in a calendar where we’re seeing ever more sprint races, and therefore it’s an FP1 and then you’re straight into a timed session, a competitive session and such rather than a free practice session. 

“It was a really useful reset around Baku time [in 2025] for him to really redouble his efforts with Bono [race engineer Peter Bonnington] and the rest of the team around him, with the regularity of the visits to the sim and the intensity and depth of the work there, for him to see the opportunity that was there for him to grab and to take. And he’s taking it with both hands.” 

Eliminating errors

While Antonelli has worked on the consistency of his control inputs to stay on top of the new cars’ energy-management requirements, he remains exciting to watch. There have been times this season where he has surprised his own team with flawless performances, while on others he has allowed the errors of execution to creep in – such as at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, where he smote the barrier in FP3 after taking fractionally too much kerb at Turn 2. 

“I guess you guys know I like to use the track sometimes a bit too much. It’s something I’m trying to work on" Kimi Antonelli

There have also been occasions where mistakes have set up camp in his head and provoked more in race situations, such as in the Miami sprint where he made a poor start from second on the grid and dropped to fourth on the opening lap. From there he racked up a string of track-limits violations as he fought to keep Russell behind him, leading to a penalty that dropped him to sixth in the classification. 

While leading the Belgian GP, he picked up two more warnings for straying beyond track limits, prompting interventions from his father as well as race engineer Bonnington. 

“I guess you guys know I like to use the track sometimes a bit too much,” he said in a press conference ahead of the following race in Hungary. “It’s something I’m trying to work on. I look back at Spa and the two track limits I did were very stupid – I was like, ‘What the heck am I doing?’ Sometimes in a race I might need to use them. But if I use them when I don’t need to, then I might find myself in trouble. 

“So for sure it’s something I’m working on. Definitely my dad, it was one of the first things he told me after the race [in Belgium]. He said, ‘Congrats, but…’ – always a but, you know – he told me, ‘If I see you doing another track limit for nothing, I’m gonna stretch your neck like a chicken’.” 

Antonelli still has room for improvement

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images

And yet there have been races where Antonelli has been flawless, not least Monaco, where any error is punishable by the barriers that lurk just millimetres away. There, at a track where Ferrari was expected to romp away, Antonelli set pole position and raced to his fifth consecutive victory under considerable pressure. 

“We were surprised ourselves about that speed,” Wolff said after the race. “The laps he was pulling, the times, they were two seconds faster than the McLarens, and a solid plus one second faster than Ferrari. And it was like clockwork. Why that is on a track that we would have not considered to be our strengths before the weekend, I don’t know.” 

It is a quality of champions that they are not only capable of magic, transcendent performances such as this, but also that they are able to bring the car home in the points on a day when the stars don’t align. At Zandvoort, for instance, Antonelli lambasted himself for not taking pole position, but dug in and aced the second start to snatch the lead from Norris.

On the hard-compound Pirellis the Mercedes’ speed mysteriously absented itself and Antonelli began to sound agitated on the radio, but he dug in to achieve the best result possible, resisting the temptation to get sucked into a potentially damaging battle with Norris as the McLaren came past. 

Both Mercedes have had engine issues this season, which may yet have a bearing on the championship run-in – but that’s probably more likely to hinder Russell, especially following Antonelli’s remarkable Monza win from a penalties-induced 19th on the grid. Russell has also lost points to bad luck, such as the safety car timing in Japan. But of the two Merc drivers it’s clear – certainly to team insiders who have spoken to Autosport – that Antonelli has adapted best to the demands of the 2026 cars and that has been borne out in the results. 

It’s too early to anoint Antonelli as one of grand prix racing’s greats, but he is clearly more than just a driver capable of occasionally winning races. And if we can be forgiven for briefly indulging in national stereotyping, more than any other Italian driver since Farina and Ascari he has blended flamboyance and raw speed with gritty self-discipline. Monaco and Monza would suggest so. Ominously for rivals, his competitive peak may lie well in the future. 

“At that age, to be doing what he’s doing and trying to find that consistency as well, I think it’s very impressive,” says Verstappen. “Also, what he did in Monaco at that age is quite tough. He’s a great talent, I knew that – I could see that coming.  

“In the first season, you have to make mistakes. It’s about how you learn from them. He’s doing that very well. It’s just very nice and impressive to see what he is doing currently. Also, what is there still to come? It’s important also just to be yourself. Don’t look at others or try to be like someone else. Just be yourself. You just need to do everything. Because that’s also how you grow up.”

This article is one of many in the monthly Autosport magazine. For more premium content, take a look at the October 2026 issue and subscribe today.

Two drivers who lit up F1 as teenagers

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