Kimi Antonelli Is F1 World Champion, and I Couldn’t Be Happier for Him

I’ve loved Formula 1 for as long as I can remember. It was one of those things that captured my imagination when I was a little kid and never really let go: the cars, the noise, the engineering, the personalities and the sense that on a Sunday afternoon almost anything could happen. One of my favourite memories from those early years was being lucky enough to have lunch in the Paddock Club with Jenson Button while he was racing for Williams-BMW. I was still a kid myself and Formula 1 felt like this impossibly glamorous world, so to suddenly be sitting there with an actual F1 driver made the whole thing feel real in a way I’ve never forgotten.

There is actually a lovely little generational link in all of this. Andrea Kimi Antonelli was born in Bologna on 25 August 2006, less than three weeks after Jenson Button finally took his first Formula 1 victory at the Hungarian Grand Prix. Twenty years later, the kid born into that era of Button, Schumacher, Alonso and Räikkönen has become a World Champion himself, and not just any World Champion. Kimi Antonelli is now the youngest Formula 1 World Champion in the history of the sport.

The youngest F1 World Champion ever

Antonelli sealed the 2026 Drivers’ Championship at the Mexico City Grand Prix aged just 20 years old, smashing a record that had belonged to Sebastian Vettel since 2010. Vettel was 23 when he won his first title, so Kimi has not merely edged past the old benchmark, he has taken more than three years off it.

He arrived in Mexico with such a commanding advantage that ninth place would have been enough to make him champion regardless of what his rivals did. Instead, he started fourth and finished on the podium in third, behind race winner Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton. The race itself was far from straightforward, with a red flag following Valtteri Bottas’ heavy accident and another late Safety Car, yet Kimi kept his head, picked his moment and passed Charles Leclerc after the restart to put himself into the top three.

There was something particularly fitting about seeing him celebrate alongside Verstappen and Hamilton, two drivers who have defined so much of Formula 1’s recent history. One photograph captured three very different generations of F1 success on the same podium, but it was the 20-year-old in the Mercedes overalls who had just rewritten the record books.

This has been a remarkable season, not a lucky one

It would be easy to focus on Kimi’s age and allow that to become the whole story, but the more impressive thing for me is how convincingly he has won this championship. Through the first 19 Grands Prix of 2026 he has scored 380 points, won nine races, taken 16 podiums and seven pole positions. He has finished inside the top ten at 17 of those races and recorded only one Grand Prix DNF. That is extraordinary consistency for any driver, never mind someone in only his second Formula 1 season.

His start to the year was especially impressive. After finishing second in Australia, he won in China, Japan, Miami, Canada and Monaco, effectively taking control of the championship almost immediately. There have been more victories since, including Belgium, Monza, Spain and Austin. By the time Formula 1 reached Mexico, the championship had stopped feeling like a question of whether Kimi could win it and become more about when he would finally make it mathematically certain.

The title also has real significance beyond the age record. Antonelli is the first Italian Formula 1 World Champion since Alberto Ascari in 1953, ending a 73-year wait for Italy, and he has delivered Mercedes its first Drivers’ Championship since Lewis Hamilton in 2020. He is also the first driver born in the 21st century to become Formula 1 World Champion, which feels like a genuine changing-of-the-guard moment for the sport.

Kimi’s rise has been ridiculously fast

What makes his story even more impressive is how quickly he has progressed through motorsport. Mercedes brought him into its Junior Programme in 2019 when he was just 12. He was already a highly successful karter, and after moving into single-seaters his results came almost immediately. In 2022 he won both the Italian and German Formula 4 championships, recording 22 wins, 21 pole positions and 27 podiums across the year.

He followed that by winning both the Formula Regional Middle East Championship and the Formula Regional European Championship in 2023, then jumped into Formula 2 with PREMA in 2024. Even there, despite being one of the youngest drivers on the grid, he became the youngest multiple race winner in the series with victories at Silverstone and Budapest before finishing sixth in the championship.

Then came the enormous leap into Formula 1. Mercedes chose an 18-year-old Antonelli to replace Lewis Hamilton for 2025, which must have been one of the most intimidating seats imaginable for a rookie. His debut season had difficult moments, but he still finished seventh in the championship with 150 points and three podiums. There were plenty of people questioning whether Mercedes had promoted him too quickly, yet a year later he is a World Champion. That is quite an answer.

Why I’ve found myself really rooting for him

I follow Kimi on Instagram and, obviously, social media only ever gives you a small window into someone’s personality, but I really like what comes across. He seems fun, energetic and genuinely passionate about what he is doing. There is still a sense of excitement about him, as though he knows how extraordinary it is to be racing these cars rather than treating Formula 1 as simply another day at the office.

What I find most appealing is that this personality does not seem to come at the expense of his driving. Once the visor comes down, he looks incredibly composed. Winning a championship requires far more than raw speed; you need judgement, consistency, resilience and the ability to deliver when the pressure becomes enormous. Kimi has shown all of those things this year, and he has managed it while still looking like he is actually enjoying himself.

There is often so much pressure on young drivers now. They arrive in Formula 1 with years of hype, huge social media followings and every mistake dissected instantly. Kimi’s first season was not perfect and there were calls in some quarters for Mercedes to reconsider its faith in him, but the team stuck with the driver it had been developing since he was 12. Watching that belief pay off so spectacularly is part of what makes this championship such a satisfying story.

A championship that feels good for Formula 1

I’ve watched enough Formula 1 over the years to know that not every championship creates the same feeling. Sometimes you admire the technical dominance, sometimes you get wrapped up in a season-long rivalry, and occasionally a driver comes along whose success simply feels good for the sport. For me, Kimi falls into that last category.

He is incredibly young, but this does not feel like a novelty title built around his age. He has won nine Grands Prix, consistently beaten experienced rivals and handled the pressure of driving for Mercedes remarkably well. The fact he is only 20 simply makes all of that even more extraordinary.

Seeing him standing on his Mercedes in Mexico with the Italian flag above his head and the words ‘2026 FIA Formula 1 World Champion’ behind him was one of those F1 images that I think will be remembered for years. I’m genuinely so pleased for him. As someone who fell in love with this sport as a kid, and who still remembers the excitement of meeting Jenson Button all those years ago, it is brilliant to feel that same sense of excitement about the beginning of somebody else’s story.

Perhaps the slightly terrifying part is that Kimi is only 20. If this is what he can achieve in his second season, we may be watching the start of one of the defining Formula 1 careers of the next decade. For now though, he deserves to enjoy this one. Kimi Antonelli, Formula 1 World Champion. I absolutely love saying that.