A year ago, at just eighteen, he made his debut in F.1. The races, but not only: the sponsors, the fans, the interviews… “A hectic life, but I’ve learned to manage it”. And to overcome moments of crisis: “Halfway through the season I lost confidence in myself, I wondered if I could make it in an environment full of sharks. But now I’m a better driver”
The weight of expectations is a full backpack that resembles the one with the school books that Andrea Kimi Antonelli has just put down. At nineteen he is preparing for the start of his second season as a starting driver in Formula 1, in a successful top team of the caliber of Mercedes, in the team aiming to return to the fight for the title thanks to the new regulatory cycle at the gates of the top flight. But when he thinks about that weight Kimi smiles and shrugs his shoulders: “Yes, sometimes managing everything is a bit complicated”, admits the Bolognese, “but racing in F.1 is the dream of my whole life. It’s what I’ve always wanted and will always want”. The determination is alive in his dark eyes, almost frightening, because it is pronounced with the light voice of a boy still discovering everything. Last June, just after winning his first podium with Mercedes in Canada, he took his high school leaving exam alongside his schoolmates, at the Gaetano Salvemini Institute in Casalecchio di Reno. Then back to Formula 1, and then again at home for a few days, eating his mother Veronica’s pasta with ragù, talking about motors with his father Marco and helping his little sister Maggy with her English homework.
double speed
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It’s a life in between, divided between the normality of a young adult and the crazy speed that the world of motorsport demands. Or rather, it is a life that doubles. The life of Andrea, the Bolognese born in 2006 who enjoys bowling with friends or on holiday on a jet ski in Sardinia. And the life of Kimi, who speeds around driving one of the most high-performance cars in the world while juggling sponsors and interviews, photo shoots and meetings with fans. This, more than anything else, is what Antonelli had to get used to: “Time management in Formula 1 is essential. At the beginning I wasted a lot of energy on off-track activities, then I understood how to regulate myself. What tired me most, what I had to eliminate and what instead made me feel better”. It took time, and even accidents were necessary in the growth of a precocious talent, catapulted into the top flight at eighteen, forced to grow quickly, going at a speed unknown to his peers. But Antonelli has been able to live well within the rush since childhood: in the tents of kart tracks around Italy he brought books to review and took advantage of long car journeys to study. Mother Veronica always made sure that school came first, even though engines had been part of Bolognese’s life since before she could remember. His father Marco, former driver and founder of the Antonelli Motorsport team, took him to a Formula 1 paddock for the first time with a ploy that Kimi still remembers with joy: “We were at Hockenheim in 2014 and my father decided to hide me in a pile of tyres”, he says, “and to try to get me to pass on a trolley so I wouldn’t be seen because I was too small to go in on my own”. Who would have thought then that one day that child would pass through the main entrance of the top flight. He who in 2012, at just six years old, posed small and happy with a red Ferrari cap on the straight of the Ala kart track, in the province of Trento, clutching a trophy in his hands. “My first cup”, we read on the official Facebook page, accompanying an image that today crosses time.
precocious talent
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Almost fourteen years have passed since then, and little Andrea has become Kimi for everyone. The young man discovered by Toto Wolff, chosen and protected as a very precious bet for the future of his Mercedes: Kimi who made his debut in single-seaters in 2021, who skipped Formula 3 and raced only one year in Formula 2. Kimi who was chosen to drive a Mercedes in the top series, in a top team, in the year of his absolute debut, without passing – as also happened to absolute talents of the caliber of Verstappen and Leclerc – from a minor team to gain experience bones without pressure. A move that could have proved too aggressive, that of team principal Toto Wolff, who however never had any doubts about him: “We have been following his path since 2018 and we know what he can do”, the Austrian had clearly explained, “but above all we know him as a person and we know how mature he is for his age”. Because for Antonelli, Mercedes has never been just a team, but a family: the very young talent was selected from the Junior program of the star’s house at just 12 years old, when he was still racing karts, with the hope that his talent would grow within the ranks of the team until he could shine in the top flight. A bet that quickly proved successful, engraved in the words spoken by Toto in Canada, in June 2025, when the young Bolognese achieved his first podium in Formula 1: “The little Kimi has become the great Kimi”, he told him via radio at the end of the race. However, to become truly great, Antonelli had to go through the ups and downs of his first year, from the purest joys to the greatest pains.
My first time in a paddock? At Hockenheim in 2014. My father hid me in a pile of tires on a trolley because I was too small to fit.”
safety
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“Halfway through the season I faced a very complex moment,” he admits. “I was no longer comfortable with the car and, losing confidence, I started to doubt myself. I cried a lot, I wondered if I was able to make it in a shark environment like Formula 1, but the team stood by me and I managed to recover. Now I know that all this helped me take an important step, to be a better driver.” Two podiums in the final phase of the championship have given a measure of the talent of the very young Italian, who is now ready to face the regulation change with a maturity built lap after lap, day after day. “I think back to the me of a year ago and I feel so much tenderness,” says Kimi. “Today I feel safer from every point of view. I feel more prepared, more relaxed. The emotion doesn’t change, it’s the same as on the first day, but I’m certainly calmer and more focused on the goal now compared to the start of last season’s championship. And I also feel like I’ve matured as a person, not just as a driver.” One year is enough to change an entire life, especially a year like this: “Now I live alone, I have learned to do the washing machines, to keep the house in order. I have discovered many passions, thanks to the stimuli that come from our environment. I travel a lot with the team but one of the objectives for 2026 will be to explore more some of the places in the world that I have only seen through the circuits. For example, Japan: in addition to Suzuka, where we race, I would like to go to Tokyo, everyone has told me that it is wonderful, and in general to discover Japanese culture better. Then also Australia, because the little I saw impressed me a lot, and not end up knowing only Melbourne, where we race the Grand Prix”. We will start right from there, from Melbourne at the beginning of March, where Antonelli of a year ago was preparing for his first race in Formula 1: “On the starting grid everything seemed so absurd to me. I saw drivers around me that I have followed as a fan and enthusiast all my life, like Lewis Hamilton, and I couldn’t believe I was one of them, now I’ve got used to it, I feel part of a family, of an environment that was previously unknown to me.” That’s how it is, growing up. Going from being a child too young to enter a Formula 1 paddock alone to becoming the youngest Formula 1 driver ever to lead a Grand Prix and the youngest to set a fastest lap in a race. “But records don’t interest me much,” admits the Bolognese. “I just want to race and win, that’s why I’m in Formula 1.” There, where Andrea’s dreams meet Kimi’s beliefs.
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