At the Italian Grand Prix in September, Mercedes rookie Kimi Antonelli scored just his third point in six races. He was being trounced by team-mate George Russell, who had scored 58 points in the same period.
Promise shown in the early part of the season, highlighted by a maiden podium in Montreal, had faded. The 19-year-old who drove superbly from 16th on the grid to fourth on his debut at a damp Albert Park had been replaced by a teenager whose inexperience, not his abundant raw talent, was showing. As well as lagging well behind his team-mate, Antonelli was also making errors all too frequently.
An awful spell of one-point finishes in seven grands prix came after a promising start – 48 points in the opening six rounds – on unfamiliar tracks. Into the European season he was floundering on circuits he knew well, making his form even more concerning.
His mature drive from the front row to second at Interlagos on Sunday, having done the same in the sprint race the day before, represents by far his finest weekend in F1. It underlines why Mercedes chose him in the first place and are sticking with him for 2026.
What was most significant about Antonelli’s performance at Interlagos was that it was the first weekend where he thoroughly out-performed Russell. The Briton is having his strongest season in F1, with two race wins and a likely finish of fourth in the standings. He has arguably been the second-best driver behind Max Verstappen in 2025. The undulating Interlagos is a track where the greats have thrived: Verstappen (again on Sunday), Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost and raw talents like Juan Pablo Montoya have all triumphed. Antonelli did not win, but made his mark in São Paulo.
In every competitive session in Brazil he was ahead – two places and 0.155sec in sprint qualifying; one place in the sprint; four places and 0.257sec in qualifying and two positions in the race. Not exactly a thrashing, but comprehensively better.
To put this into context, before last weekend Antonelli had out-qualified Russell three times out of a possible 24. In races they both took the chequered flag, Antonelli managed to finish above Russell in a sprint or grand prix for the first and only time in round 20 in Mexico.
Looking at where Antonelli was faster around Interlagos on their final Q3 runs, there were only two areas where Russell had an advantage – on the run into turn one and at turn 10. There does not appear to be any real secret to Antonelli’s performance nor easy answers to Russell being consistently behind. The Italian teenager was just faster in general.
After Monza, I wrote that Antonelli appeared to be drowning in the pressure of Toto Wolff’s desire to find the next Verstappen. “He certainly has the ability to succeed in F1 and should be given the time to do so, but his trajectory is closer to [Stoffel] Vandoorne than Verstappen,” was my conclusion.
Does last weekend mean Antonelli needs to be reconsidered as a prospect and earlier criticism dismissed? Not exactly, but this performance as well as the last handful of races will mean Wolff and Mercedes’ decision to pick and stick with him is looking sounder.
What is important is what he does over the next year and beyond. Being a success in Formula One is not just about talent. Antonelli has bundles of that, but the important thing is being able to deliver, not just more often than not but weekend after weekend. For every Lewis Hamilton there is a Jean Alesi; someone whose career achievements ultimately fell well short of their ability.
In Antonelli’s favour is that he had already arrested his mid-season slide with strong performances in Azerbaijan, Singapore and Mexico City. At the end of the Dutch Grand Prix – where Antonelli punted Charles Leclerc out of the race – he had scored 64 points to Russell’s 184, or just 34.8 per cent of his team-mate’s points. Since then he has scored 58 to Russell’s 92, or a shade over 63 per cent.
Antonelli’s average qualifying position for sprints and grands prix in that same period has been 5.4, Russell’s 4.4. The average finishing position for sprints and grands prix in that time has Antonelli at 6.7 and Russell at 3.7. The average qualifying gap in those eight sessions is just 0.025sec in Russell’s favour, compared with 0.312sec before.
How has he turned this around so dramatically? Antonelli said before the Dutch Grand Prix that he was under massive pressure, felt it keenly and struggled to handle it. Perhaps being given a new contract – and putting in a couple of strong performances – has eased his worries. Maybe he, like Norris since his Zandvoort retirement, has been driving with a newly-found freedom.
There was a possibility that Antonelli was overthinking things earlier in the season, with too many off-track distractions on a race weekend. Perhaps what a natural talent like Antonelli’s needs to succeed is to be unburdened. There is a long way to go before he is the finished product, but he is at last heading in the right direction.