Twenty-year-old Kimi Antonelli needs a ninth-place finish or better in Mexico City this weekend to become the youngest Formula 1 World Champion in history. He’s skipping Thursday media duties because he’s sick. The kid might clinch a title while fighting off a bug.
FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem recently told The Drive about the moment he first encountered Antonelli’s name on an FIA Super License application. The age field read 18. He stopped and looked up at his staff.
“I looked at it, and I said, ’18?’ I looked up, and they said, ‘Yes, sir, 18.’ Of course I knew nobody would lie on that form, but still,” Ben Sulayem recalled.
That reaction captures something the raw statistics can’t. This is a driver who was confirmed as Lewis Hamilton’s replacement at Mercedes when he was 17 years old. He crashed at Monza’s Parabolica during his official confirmation weekend.
His rookie season was uneven enough to make Mercedes brass squirm. And now, in just his second year, he’s about to become the first Italian F1 champion in 73 years. The last Italian to win the title did it in 1952.
Ben Sulayem, who has watched motorsport from the governing body’s highest perch, pointed to something beyond raw talent. “He just goes and drives and delivers the results,” the FIA president said. “He was under attack last year with some online abuse, you know, and then he had that crash in Monza when he went off into the gravel. Then he came back and became the first young Italian to win there in 60 years.”
The trajectory from that Monza gravel trap to the brink of a championship is the kind of arc F1 rarely produces this quickly. Max Verstappen won his first title at 24. Sebastian Vettel was 23.
Fernando Alonso was 24. Antonelli is doing it at 20, in a sport where experience is supposed to matter, where rookies are supposed to take their lumps for a few seasons before contending.
What strikes observers in the paddock is how unfinished he still looks in every way except behind the wheel. He FaceTimes friends while walking through the Austin paddock. He got hoisted onto the shoulders of an NFL player in Miami.
He rides a scooter down alleyways in Suzuka. He looks like a college sophomore on spring break who happens to drive a Mercedes-AMG F1 car faster than almost anyone alive.
“I’ve never heard him complaining; he never complains,” Ben Sulayem said. “He diverts from complaining.”
That temperament, paired with what the FIA president called “phenomenon” status, is what separates Antonelli from the long list of talented teenagers who burned bright and faded. Ben Sulayem was careful to define the word. “Phenomenon means a lot of things; it’s not just being born with it. It means that you do all your training, you have your own way of thinking.”
The training matters. The family support matters. The Mercedes W16 underneath him matters enormously. But none of it explains how an 18-year-old’s Super License application made the president of world motorsport’s governing body pause mid-signature.
Mexico City is Sunday. Antonelli just needs to finish ninth. He’s done that or better in 17 of 20 races this season.
The only question now is whether whatever illness kept him from Thursday obligations lingers into race day. Even so, ninth is ninth. He doesn’t need to be heroic. He just needs to show up and do what he’s done all year, which is drive like someone who doesn’t yet fully understand how unusual all of this is.
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