Kimi Antonelli likes to make sure his car is clean.
Even before a trip that is likely to end with him becoming Formula 1’s youngest world champion, he cannot bring himself to leave before he’s completed a familiar ritual: a visit to the car wash in his road car, a Mercedes GT63. The Italian washes it by hand, meticulously, inside and out. Only then can he travel to his next Formula 1 race.
Asked whether or not he times himself at the car wash, 20-year-old Antonelli laughed.
“No, no, no,” he replied in a small group interview including ESPN.
“I take my time because it needs to be done well. It needs to be cleaned well. It needs to be dried well, because if you don’t dry it well and there’s still some water [on it]then, you know, it’s weird. It looks dirty. So it needs to be done well and then also inside.
“I take my time. For that, I take my time.”
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It’s funny, because almost nothing about Antonelli’s journey to this point has been an exercise in taking one’s time.
The U.S. Grand Prix on Oct. 26 will be the first time in his career he can win the Formula 1 world drivers’ championship, even if there’s only a slim mathematical chance he will get it done at the Circuit of the Americas. But whether he does it there, or in Mexico City a week later, or in Brazil a week after that, or at the triple header currently slated to finish the season, Antonelli’s lead is so big that he almost certainly will at some point in the next two months become the sport’s youngest-ever world champion, in just his second season racing in Formula 1. Amid all of that, keeping any semblance of normality has been a challenge in itself.
Which brings us back to the car wash.
“Racing is always on my mind. I try not to think too much about, first of all, the situation I’m in, because I feel like if I would think too much about championship and stuff, I would probably get anxious as well. Also I wouldn’t have quality time at home, because I would just be worrying about this.”
He then elaborated on his new-found ritual.
“I like to clean my car,” Antonelli said. “I never do automatic, you know, with the machine. I always like to wash by hand, myself. Because I love cars, I really like to take care of my car and everything. I like to see it clean, so it’s an activity I love to do. It’s a routine.”
Normality and routine has been the name of the game for Antonelli in 2026 as he has tried to fight off the growing realisation of what he’s about to achieve. But it has been difficult. He’s become a superstar in Italy, almost overnight, with his legendary status at home cemented in September with his astonishing victory from 19th on the grid at the Italian Grand Prix. It made him the first Italian winner of that race since 1966 and will go down as the crowning moment of a season which will end with him becoming the first Italian world champion since Alberto Ascari in 1953. A nation so regularly tortured by Ferrari’s disappointments over the past two decades has had a singular new star to rally around.
That would be a lot for anyone to shoulder — let alone someone who had only turned 20 two weeks before he stood on the top step of Monza’s iconic podium stage.
Asked how he has processed becoming Italy’s biggest sporting icon so young, he shrugged, and shook his head, almost as if still unable to fully comprehend it all.
“I try to realise the least as possible,” he said. “The situation I’m in, and also the person I’m becoming … whenever I go back home, I want to feel as normal as possible.”
Key to that has been Antonelli’s school friends — the same he studied with last year, when his mother insisted that he had to finish his exams even if he had become a Formula 1 rookie at 18. The same friends who came to support him in the paddock at the Imola race, a stone’s throw away from hometown Bologna, last year.
“The situation I’m in and also the person I’m becoming … whenever I go back home, I want to feel as normal as possible,” he said. “I always try to do the normal things, like every human being. So, go to the supermarket, go, to the cinema … it’s more difficult, but I still do so.
“I go with my friends to the pub to watch sport. Especially when we have a weekend off and there’s racing, or there’s tennis, or any kind of sport. I like to go to the pub with my friends and watch from there, or play bowling, this kind of stuff.
“Whenever I go back home, I try to live a normal life. Of course, it’s not easy at times, because whenever you go, it’s harder to get the same amount of privacy.”
Antonelli’s claims of trips to the car wash, the pub, the supermarket and bowling alley would be harder to fathom if he lived in the big city or in a bustling modern town, given the harsh combination of his enormous fame and the social media age he’s grown into. While most of his F1 rivals live in Monaco, he now resides in San Marino, the small republic housed inside Italy, about 80 miles from Bologna.
“I like San Marino because it’s very small and basically everyone knows each other. You don’t get asked for pictures anymore because it’s always the same people. I think it’s really cool.
“But yeah, whenever I go back home, I just try to live a normal life, not think too much about racing and just enjoy the time with my friends, family, because it also helps me to disconnect a little bit and especially get out from this external bubble that we are in, especially when we’re at the race weekend.”
From raw rookie to F1 superstar
It seemed to be an enormous gamble, to put it mildly, when Mercedes boss Toto Wolff decided that the man to replace the Ferrari-bound Lewis HamiltonF1’s most accomplished driver, in 2025 should in fact be a teenager. Antonelli, the exciting, but untested prodigy on Mercedes’ junior programme, was given the nod.
The narrative that it was too much too soon was easy to write — Antonelli crashed out of his first practice run at Monza in August 2024, a day before the team made the official confirmation. Wolff later admitted the free practice appearance in front of a frenzied Italian media and fanbase had been ill-advised. After that crash, Mercedes’ boss gave his viewpoint on Antonelli’s raw, then-unpolished talent, one he has repeated in some form or another a lot over the next two years: “It’s always easier to calm down a fast horse than to make a slow horse fast.”
Wolff and Mercedes had to echo that viewpoint a lot in 2025. Antonelli’s rookie season was a rollercoaster — especially in a dismal run of European races in the middle of the year, which included a collision with Max Verstappen in Austria and Charles Leclerc in the Netherlands — and the stark contrast to teammate George Russell‘s superb and consistent performances in the other car made it easy to anoint the British driver as preseason favourite coming into a new season and rules set which re-established Mercedes as the benchmark team to beat. But Antonelli went into the winter break with a chance to take stock at the opportunity he had been given.
“It was mainly digesting. The first season, you’re naturally a bit more tense,” he said.
“I felt like I mainly needed time, to digest, to look at the season again. Understand what was good about the season, what was not good. And understanding as well, what was good for me.”
Antonelli, who has admitted he tried to do too much as a rookie, both on and off track, came into the new season a changed man. After Russell won the opening race in Australia, Antonelli claimed an emotional maiden win in China and then won the next four in a row in Japan, Miami, Canada and Monaco. He’s not looked back since. He snuffed out a brief Russell fightback by winning in Belgium in July, before the Italy win was followed up by victory at Madring’s first Spanish Grand Prix.
Even to Antonelli, the contrast between life as an overthinking rookie and a championship leader is night and day.
“It’s pretty insane, the step,” he admitted. “Because, for sure, having a fast car helps. Obviously. [But] I wouldn’t have expected to be a contender like this, this season. Of course, I find myself in this position and I’m very happy, very grateful to be in this position and I’ve got to keep pushing.
“But … definitely, at the start of the year, I would have never thought to be in this position. Especially because we were confident with the car, I knew I could have fought for wins. A few wins, podiums. But to be in this position? For sure not. But it was a very nice surprise.
“And now we’ve just got to finish the job.”
He pointed to the Monza victory as the best example of how he’s changed things.
“Last year, at the home race, the way it was managed was not good. The way I managed myself. While this year, I feel like, on things that are less important, I leant a lot on the people that I have around [me]. So they take care of it and I don’t have to worry about [those things].
“The only thing I worry about is going on track and doing the best I can. While last year, I was worrying about way too many things. Especially my home race. And that’s why I felt so drained, mentally, so early into the weekend.
“While this year, I feel in a much better place. Much more protected. Also because the things that I tried to take care of last year, this year the team was taking care of, the people working with me. I could focus on the important things. That has been a big thing for me.”
The prankster world champion
Those close to Antonelli will all tell you the same thing: becoming F1’s newest superstar has not changed him at all. Antonelli’s happy-go-lucky approach to life seemed perfect for a teenage rookie — but many at Mercedes wondered how long that would last through his elevation to a championship contender.
But rather than becoming a pressure-cooker environment, things have flipped around, something he said he notices in how he interacts with race engineer Peter Bonnington, who works with Antonelli now having guided Hamilton to his six championships at Mercedes.
“This is more relaxed,” he said. “You have more confidence with the team. You know each other better. Last year, for example, with Bono.
“As an Italian, I like to give hugs. For example, after a race, after a great result, I like to go there and give him a hug. Share the moment. And last year, it would get very tense at times. You could see it would tense up. But this year, he actually enjoys it. Because he knows it’s part of myself as well.
“But also, he enjoys it. He probably won’t admit it, but he does. He does enjoy it.”
Bonnington has been on the receiving end of a lot of Antonelli’s mischief this year — the team’s Instagram account has recorded several pranks at the race engineer’s expense, including Antonelli putting chilli sauce in his drink during preseason testing, and having his key card for Mercedes’ F1 headquarters turned off during a visit ahead of the summer break.
Antonelli’s boyish enthusiasm for japes has extended to the whole team. After the summer break, a fake interview was set up by the team in the paddock, giving 19 mechanics an opportunity to ambush the Italian and cover him in plates of cream.
During our interview, Antonelli started laughing and briefly asked to go off record so he could detail his next devious plan.
He then ran through a list of people who have been on the receiving end through the season, but there was one obvious name missing.
Asked if he has ever dared prank Wolff, Antonelli laughed.
The young man on the verge of achieving the biggest thing in all of motor racing admitted he still needs to work up the courage for that.
“This is next level,” he said in reply. “You need to have big balls to do that!”
Of course, Antonelli might just have the confidence needed to do it by the end of the year.
“I’m going to have to finish well in the championship, finish well this year. Then I have a reason to do it [to Wolff].
“And so then he won’t complain too much about it! But that’s like next level.”
Source: www.espn.com
