Mexico City, Nov 2 (IANS) Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff hailed youngster Kimi Antonelli’s historic 2026 title win, reflecting on the hard time that the team and the Italian faced in his rookie season last year and now reaching the top of the world in 2026.
Antonelli was brought in as a replacement for the legendary seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton, who left for Ferrari, as George Russell had a teenage partner behind the wheel in the Silver Arrows.
In 2025, Antonelli was seventh in the drivers’ championship as he failed to score in as many as 10 races, with calls to replace him getting louder. In 2026, the 20-year-old kid etched his name into the history books after becoming the youngest-ever champion in F1 with a third-place finish at the Mexico Grand Prix.
Speaking to Sky Sports F1 after Antonelli’s win, Wolff said that getting him into the Mercedes seat “was always a calculated risk, not a real risk” and he feels as if it was yesterday that he was in junior karting.
“It’s incredible; we have to pinch ourselves because it seems like yesterday he was 11 years old in the garage in junior karting. And it goes so fast,” he said.
“He won the junior formula, then had a difficult year in F2, and that’s already where people started to doubt. Then when Lewis (Hamilton) told me, ‘I’m going to Ferrari’, it was my immediate reaction that we’ve got to put him in the car. But people were doubters.
“I was thinking before, we had two sponsors leaving us because of that because who is this kid? There were others who stayed with us until today; some are here that reap the full reward and then the difficult year.
“People said he shouldn’t even be in F1; he should be at a smaller team, 10 races and no points, the tears in Spa, and then this. I’m just so proud of the team; all of them continued to trust him, and he delivered,” Wolff added.
Wolff further stressed how the Italian changed the emotional culture in the team, especially among the British people. “He obviously has a very winning way in the team. We’re dealing with very stiff, unemotional English people,” Wolff told Sky Sports F1.
“So then comes this Italian boy that starts to hug everyone in the garage, and you can see how it changed the environment, and now all the Brits are hugging each other, which is weird to see.
“He’s a kid. He’s 20 years old. You see him driving, the maturity, and the interaction with the partners, but then for his birthday he goes to the waterpark, and that is so great to see. I was like, ‘where’s Kimi I need to speak with him?’ Kimi’s at the waterpark with his friends. We love that,” the Austrian said.
–IANS
vm/bc