Champ Antonelli showed potential at 10!

Kimi Antonelli clinching his first world title and becoming the youngest champion in Formula 1 history is an amazing feat considering only a couple of months ago he was still a teenager.

Antonelli finished third at the Mexico City Grand Prix to secure enough points with several races still to come.

Antonelli was 20 years and 68 days old on Sunday. He finished the race in third, behind Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton. Antonelli smashed Sebastian Vettel’s previous record for being the youngest champion by three years and 67 days.

He also becomes the first Italian to win the F1 title since Alberto Ascari in 1953. He had tears mixed with laughter over the radio on the slowing down lap as he proved initially incapable of talking when his team told him he was world champion.

After he composed himself, he said: “Thank you so much. We did it. We did it.”

He has already broken a number of records. In his second season, he became the youngest driver to achieve a pole position in China and the youngest to lead the championship at the next race in Japan.

In Monaco, he became the youngest driver to complete a ‘grand slam’ of pole position, fastest lap, leading every lap and winning the race.

All this after a rookie season in 2025 in which there were occasional highs but plenty of errors, and his final total of 150 points was less than half of the 319 accumulated by Mercedes team-mate George Russell.

Antonelli was 10 when his father Marco first realised the boy sitting on his lap, operating the steering and gears, might have an exceptional talent as a racing driver. From the way the kid handled the car at full speed, Marco realised that his son had an exceptional talent. He wasn’t wrong.