Kimi Antonelli: Mercedes driver hailed by pundits and Toto Wolff after remarkable 19th to first Italian GP comeback win | F1 News

On a Monza weekend that had already produced one implausible result in qualifying, Italy’s new young star Kimi Antonelli delivered a second in Sunday’s thrilling race to ensure its own prominent place in Formula 1’s history books.

Of course, unlike surprise pole position sitter Pierre Gasly – who had never previously qualified at the head of an F1 grid in 190 appearances spent in mostly midfield cars – the 20-year-old Antonelli has become a fixture at the head of the field this year.

Sunday represented the seventh race win of the Mercedes driver’s increasingly-impressive second of Formula 1 and one which extended what stood as a 59-point championship lead to a joint season-high 66 points.

But by winning from the second-lowest grid position in F1’s 76-year history – 19th place – and beating a team-mate and chief title rival in George Russell who had started from the front row, Antonelli ensured it was anything but just another win.

And that’s before you even consider the local factor too – Antonelli ended a 60-year wait for an Italian to win their home Grand Prix again.

The remarkable Monza comeback led to Antonelli being described as “King Kimi” by Martin Brundle, who has both raced against and commentated on many of the sport’s most legendary figures over more than four decades.

Brundle’s fellow Sky Sports F1 pundit Nico Rosberg, the 2016 world champion, was similarly effusive in his praise after witnessing Antonelli’s remarkable drive.

“We have to say the race that he drove, the first lap, the second start, everything was to perfection,” said Rosberg.

“The speed he had, how he was managing everything. You cannot do it better.

“He’s in his second season in F1, he just turned 20. Who does that like that? It’s just unheard of!”

‘He’s going to walk over water’ – Wolff thought ‘special moment’ was possible

Rosberg had been among the many ahead of the race to suggest that a podium was likely out of Antonelli’s reach from the grid’s penultimate row, something the Italian himself had ruled out after qualifying.

But it turns out that not everyone was expecting it to necessarily be a race purely of damage limitation from the grid penalties that had left Antonelli so out of position.

“I thought one of the two [Mercedes drivers] is going to win,” disclosed Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff after the race.

“Either George because he was on pole [for the restart] or Kimi because he’s going to walk over water here in Monza. And I felt that yesterday also.”

Wolff, who worked with Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes for six of the Briton’s seven world titles, said he sensed “a special moment” was potentially in the offing from Antonelli at his home track.

“Its been a while that I’ve seen drivers’ energy levels, mindset or behavioural pattern and I knew that that was his mission today, to win the race,” he said.

“I chatted with his father yesterday, the father also saw that coming.

“These are the moments where you can see how a weekend is panning out through the sessions, that a special moment could come.

“It’s still a mechanical sport, so it can change quickly.”

What made the difference for Antonelli?

Like any great comeback story, Antonelli’s was not without some good fortune along the way.

Certainly, the second race start after the red flag for Charles Leclerc’s big lap-two crash offered a second chance to make up multiple places more quickly than otherwise might have made the chance had the race not been stopped, even if it did compromise Mercedes’ plans for running Antonelli on a long hard-tyre opening stint.

He was already running 12th by the time the red flag was thrown. He then picked up four more places on the restart lap. By lap 13 he was directly behind Russell in third and, once Gasly’s early challenge faded, the Mercedes’ went head-to-head from lap 16 in what soon turned into an almost lap-by-lap changing of the lead.

Eventually running second as the battle settled down slightly, a later well-timed Virtual Safety Car then allowed Antonelli to make a pit stop to switch on to fresher medium tyres, with Russell soon locked in to going to the end on more-worn hards, although Wolff said it was not clear at the time which strategy would win the race.

In any case, Wolff believes it was Antonelli’s driving on track overtaking cars that made the difference.

“The differentiator today was the ability going through the traffic,” added Wolff. “We’ve seen it with other great ones in the past. Lewis put it in some of the races and that’s what he’s shown today.

“There’s just no stopping when a driver and a car are one, then there’s nothing that can stop them.”

As for Italy’s rising star himself, Antonelli said he had woke up on Sunday morning feeling “very good mentally” and “that a very good result would have been a podium for me”.

“But after the red flag I was already P12 and I had another start,” he added.

“After another couple of laps I was already in the top five and I knew I could have a shot for the win. Of course it was very difficult to break away but we managed to pull it off and bring it home.”

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