Antonelli, world champion at twenty, in tears on the last lap

On the last lap, he could not see the track

This is the detail that will stay with this race, and it appears on no timing sheet. On the final lap, Antonelli lost 1.8 seconds to the leaders. Not a tyre problem, not a call on the radio.

"I lost probably two seconds because I was already crying," he said afterwards. "I couldn't see clearly ahead." He added that he could still make out the two Ferraris in front of him, somehow, through the tears. And that he had backed off deliberately: pushing in that state meant putting it in the wall two kilometres from the finish.

Five years earlier he was moving from karting into single-seaters. He says that whole road came back to him on that one lap.

Four records fell on the same Sunday

The youngest world champion. Sebastian Vettel had held the record since 2010, at 23 years and 134 days. Antonelli beats it by more than three years.

The first Italian champion since 1953. Italy had not had a world champion since Alberto Ascari, who won in 1952 and 1953. Antonelli is the country's third, after Giuseppe Farina, the sport's first ever champion in 1950, and Ascari.

Mercedes' first drivers' title since 2020. The team had not won the drivers' championship since the seventh crown of Lewis Hamilton, now at Ferrari and second in Mexico City.

A title sealed with four races to spare. Brazil, Las Vegas, Qatar and Abu Dhabi remain, with nothing left to settle at the top of the drivers' table.

How the race played out

Starting fourth, Antonelli began cautiously. He gave up a place to Max Verstappen on the run to turn one rather than risk contact on a day when a retirement would have complicated everything.

Ahead of him, the opening lap turned into a clash between Hamilton and Charles Leclerc, the two Ferraris fighting for the lead. Both ran off the track, and Leclerc picked up a five-second penalty.

On lap forty-four, Valtteri Bottas crashed at very high speed. Safety Car, then a red flag. That is what reopened the race: the second standing start reset the gaps, and Antonelli changed his approach. He took more risk, he passed Leclerc, and that move is what gave him the podium.

The closing laps were tight, the top three covered by two seconds. Another Safety Car, after a crash for Arvid Lindblad, bunched the field again. Verstappen held Hamilton off by 0.799s. Antonelli crossed the line 4.006s behind the winner, and in tears.

A season led from start to finish

The title was not decided in Mexico City, it was built from March onwards. Antonelli took the championship lead at round three and never gave it back. Nine wins in nineteen races: China, Japan, Miami, Canada, Monaco, Belgium, Italy, Spain and the United States.

The drivers' standings after Mexico City: Antonelli 380 points, Verstappen 261, Hamilton 259, George Russell 250, Leclerc 245, Lando Norris 221. One hundred points remain across the final four races, and the gap is 119.

The people who said he was not ready

Mercedes moved him up fast, very fast. Formula 3 skipped entirely, a single season in Formula 2, then straight into the works team in 2025, aged 18. Plenty of people thought it was too soon, and his first season gave them material: across one run of nine rounds, he failed to score on seven of them.

Asked about that criticism after his title, he said hearing that he did not belong in Formula 1 had "added fuel to the fire". He adds that those difficult months prepared him: facing pressure and bad weekends made him mature faster than any quiet season at a smaller team would have.

He does not claim to be satisfied with everything. He points to races where he could have done far better, and talks about a learning process that continues. That may be the worrying part for the others: he has won the championship and still rates his own season as improvable.

What is still at stake

The drivers' title is settled, the rest is not. In the constructors' championship Mercedes leads on 630 points from Ferrari on 504, a gap of 126 with 172 points still available. The team is not champion yet, even if it is well placed.

Behind Antonelli, four drivers are covered by sixteen points for second place: Verstappen, Hamilton, Russell and Leclerc. And Red Bull leads McLaren by seventeen points for third among the teams. The last four races will not decide the champion, they will decide everything else.

Next up: São Paulo, 6 to 8 November. Then Las Vegas on the 21st, Qatar on the 29th, and Abu Dhabi on 6 December to close it out. The whole grid is in the Formula 1 collection.

The name to wear now

Four pieces in the catalogue carry his name: a t-shirt, a sweatshirt, a phone case and a pair of socks. It was a prospect's collection, and it became a world champion's in the space of one afternoon.

Kimi Antonelli t-shirt2026 world champion Kimi Antonelli sweatshirtNine wins this season Number 12 socksThe champion's number

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