Kimi Antonelli is racing towards his first world title, but his always on-the-edge driving continues to worry Toto Wolff at Mercedes.
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With an 81-point lead over George Russell and more than 100 over Lewis Hamilton, Kimi Antonelli holds an extremely comfortable position at the top of the championship. Yet, Toto Wolff is not completely at ease. The Mercedes boss knows that his young driver has a troublesome tendency to keep pushing when the situation no longer really demands it.
The Spanish Grand Prix offered a new illustration of this. While he had a comfortable lead in the final laps and was heading towards his eighth win of the season, Antonelli told his engineer Peter Bonnington that he might have hit a wall. This caused some extra cold sweats at Mercedes.
Antonelli keeps pushing even when he dominates
This tendency to exceed track limits or brush the walls is not new for the Italian. Wolff particularly recalls his debut during the free practice sessions of the 2024 Italian Grand Prix, when the young driver lost control of the Mercedes after crossing the white lines.
Since then, the team boss and Marco Antonelli, Kimi’s father, regularly try to remind him that it is not always necessary to exploit every available centimeter.
“I just discussed it with his father and it’s simply Kimi. We had to get into his head that he must not cross the white lines, especially after Monza in 2024, when he crossed them before crashing the car.”
Wolff even joked about the situation with his protégé by asking him if he could really distinguish the track limits from his cockpit.
“I asked him: ‘Can’t you see from the car? Do you need something above to show you where the track limits are?'”
“He gives me these gray hairs”
Two years later, the problem has obviously not completely disappeared. In Madrid, Antonelli had every reason to slightly reduce his pace in the final laps. He had a sufficient lead to control the race and calmly head towards victory.
But that is clearly not in his nature. About six laps from the finish, the Italian warned his team that he had just brushed a wall and asked them to check if his W17 had suffered any damage.
“We laughed about it, and during the Spanish Grand Prix, about six laps from the finish, he announces: ‘Check the car, I hit the wall.'”
For Wolff, this way of constantly staying on the edge is as worrying as it can explain part of Antonelli’s speed.
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“He’s the one giving me all these gray hairs. But maybe he’s just like that and that’s also what makes him so fast.”
Antonelli still refuses to think about the championship
This aggressiveness has so far not prevented the Mercedes driver from building a considerable lead in the championship. His win in Madrid, the eighth of his season, allowed him to extend his advantage to 81 points over Russell.
At only 20 years old, Antonelli could also shatter the record for the youngest world champion in Formula 1 history. Sebastian Vettel held this record since his 2010 title, but the Italian could lower the record by more than three years if he manages to maintain his lead until the end of the season.
Despite this situation, Wolff assures that his driver still does not look ahead to the title. The Austrian executive says he is impressed by his ability to completely separate his daily life from his work when he gets in the car.
“He obviously doesn’t think about it. This boy has this ability to compartmentalize things: he can be a young man his age and then get in the car and become an extremely mature driver.”
According to Wolff, when Antonelli says he is not thinking about the championship, it is therefore not just a phrase intended for the media.
“When Kimi says: ‘I’m not thinking about the championship,’ he really isn’t thinking about the championship.”
Wolff warns against a “black swan”
Despite Mercedes’ comfortable lead in the drivers’ championship, Wolff refuses to consider the title as secured. He especially warns against what he describes as a “black swan”, that is, an extremely unlikely and unpredictable event likely to completely upset a situation that seemed under control.
A retirement, a mechanical problem, or a series of bad results could quickly reduce Antonelli’s lead. Mercedes therefore wants to avoid any relaxation as several Grands Prix remain to be contested.
“There are always completely unpredictable events. They can happen and you can end up losing something when you no longer even thought it was possible to lose it.”
Antonelli therefore has a considerable lead, but Mercedes still refuses to celebrate anything. And as long as his young driver continues to brush the walls while comfortably leading a race, Toto Wolff will indeed likely see some more gray hairs appear before the 2026 title is definitively secured.
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