Kimi Antonelli becomes F1’s youngest ever world champion in Mexico City

Third place. On a normal Sunday, a Mercedes driver leaves the podium with a polite smile and a list of things to fix before the next race. This was no normal Sunday. Andrea Kimi Antonelli crossed the line third at the Mexico City Grand Prix and became the youngest world champion in Formula 1 history.

Max Verstappen won the race for Red Bull. Lewis Hamilton finished second for Ferrari. Neither result mattered much to the people in black and silver, who were busy hugging each other on the pit wall.

Antonelli is 20 years and 68 days old. Sebastian Vettel held the record before today, having won the 2010 title at 23 years and 134 days (see the full list of F1’s youngest champions). The Italian has taken more than three years off the mark. Here’s the bit which makes my head spin. Antonelli was four years old when Vettel set the old record.

Two points and a virus

The sums before lights out were kind to him. Antonelli arrived on 365 points, 123 ahead of team-mate George Russell, with 125 points available across the last five rounds (title permutations before the race). A top-nine finish would settle the title whatever his rivals did. Even a zero would do, provided neither Russell nor Hamilton won.

He came close to finishing the job a week earlier. Antonelli won in Austin, his ninth victory from 18 races (United States Grand Prix results), but the numbers didn’t quite line up. Afterwards he told Sky Sports the ideal plan was to “finish off in style and enjoy the rest of the season” (Antonelli on his Mexico build-up).

Then the virus arrived. Mercedes pulled him from Thursday’s media day while he recovered (Antonelli skips Mexico media day), and Cadillac’s Valtteri Bottas sat out the same day with his own bug. Hardly the build-up you’d pick for the biggest weekend of your career.

Qualifying offered little comfort. Hamilton grabbed his first pole position as a Ferrari driver, edging Russell by 0.009 seconds, and became the oldest pole-sitter since 1982 along the way (Hamilton’s first Ferrari pole). Antonelli qualified fifth. He started fourth only because Verstappen collected a one-place grid penalty for a scrappy clash with Liam Lawson in second practice (the stewards’ verdict).

Red flags, restarts and a nervous wait

Sunday was chaotic from the first corner. Charles Leclerc picked up a five-second penalty for leaving the track and gaining an advantage in an opening-lap scrap with Hamilton, his own team-mate. Antonelli stayed clear of the mess and ran a long first stint, leading the race before he pitted on lap 43.

Two laps later, Bottas hit trouble. A front-left suspension failure (what went wrong for Bottas) sent the Cadillac into the Turn 1 barriers at high speed. Bottas climbed out on his own and spoke to his team on the radio, the best news of the afternoon. The Safety Car came out, a cluster of drivers dived into the pits, and race control then stopped the race (red flag with 25 laps left) to let marshals rebuild the barrier.

Nerves crept into the Mercedes garage at this point. Race control set the restart order from the lap before the crash (the revised restart order), which moved Hamilton back up to third and dropped Antonelli to fourth. On paper, one place. In your head, with 25 laps between you and a world title? Different story.

Verstappen launched cleanly when the race resumed and Hamilton slipped past Leclerc. By lap 52 the top three read Verstappen, Hamilton, Antonelli (ABC’s live coverage).

One more scare came on lap 59. Arvid Lindblad hit the wall after contact with Oscar Piastri, and the Safety Car returned (Crash.net live blog). Verstappen held Hamilton off on the restart and kept the gap at around 1.2 seconds. Antonelli kept third, looked after his tyres and stayed out of trouble.

Lap 71. Chequered flag. Champion.

Fifteen points for third take him to 380, and nobody is able to catch him with four rounds left.

From Bologna to Mexico City

Antonelli was born in Bologna on 25 August 2006. His father, Marco, runs the AKM Motorsport team, so racing was part of family life from the start. Mercedes signed him to its junior programme while he was still in karts, and the results came quickly. He won the Italian and ADAC Formula 4 titles in 2022, then the Formula Regional Middle East and European championships in 2023.

Mercedes then skipped him past Formula 3 and put him straight into Formula 2 with Prema for 2024, where he won twice. He even held an F1 licence before he was old enough to drive on Italian roads (how Antonelli is making F1 history).

Then came the call. Hamilton announced his move to Ferrari, and Toto Wolff gave the most famous seat in the sport to a teenager. Plenty of people (me included, if I’m honest) thought Mercedes had rushed him. His rookie year in 2025 had bright spots and rough patches, and the doubts lasted into the winter.

2026 silenced them. Quickly.

• China: the youngest pole-sitter in F1 history, then a first Grand Prix win, with tears at the finish (Antonelli’s maiden win in Shanghai).
• Japan: a second straight win made him the youngest championship leader ever, beating Hamilton’s 2007 record (youngest championship leader). Officials at Suzuka kept the champagne away from him because he was under Japan’s drinking age of 20.
• Miami and Canada: two more wins, making four in a row.
• Monaco: the youngest winner in the race’s history, with a grand chelem (pole, win, fastest lap and every lap led) on top.

Italy’s first champion since Ascari

Italy has waited 73 years for this. The last Italian world champion was Alberto Ascari, who won back-to-back titles with Ferrari in 1952 and 1953 (first Italian champion since Ascari). The tifosi will spot the irony. Their new hero sealed the title in a Mercedes, on a day when a Ferrari finished right in front of him.

Mercedes ends its own wait too. The team’s last drivers’ title came with Hamilton in 2020. Before the weekend, Wolff put his confidence at 99.9 per cent while reminding everyone his driver still had to get the job done (Wolff on the title). He did.

Is Antonelli the finished article? No. The scary part for everyone else is right there. He spent the weekend shaking off a virus, started fourth, lost a place under the red flag because of a technicality, and still drove a tidy, mistake-free race to the flag.

Brazil comes next, at Interlagos on 8 November. Antonelli arrives as champion, and Mercedes still has the constructors’ title to wrap up after leading Ferrari 607 points to 474 before Mexico. One thing will change on his next podium. At 20, nobody is hiding the champagne from him.