The Last Line

0:00 Mexico City 2026, and a first practice at Monza that ended in the barrier

The first of November, 2026. Mexico City. Kimi Antonelli crosses the line in third place, and it is enough. At twenty years and sixty-eight days old, he is the youngest world champion Formula One has ever had.

Twenty-six months earlier, his very first session at a Formula One race weekend had ended in the barrier.

Monza, the thirtieth of August, 2024. He is eighteen, in George Russell's car, at his home Grand Prix. About ten minutes in, he loses the car at the Parabolica.

The next day, Mercedes gives him the seat of a seven-time world champion. Lewis Hamilton's.

Formula One keeps one list above all others: its world champions. This is the road from that Friday at Monza to that Sunday in Mexico City.

1:11 The question: a race winner was available

In 2024, a race winner had been available. Mercedes chose a teenager who had never started a Grand Prix.

So how does that teenager end up on that list? It starts with a call Mercedes announced in the summer of 2024.

1:28 The call: Hamilton to Ferrari, Sainz to Williams, Antonelli announced at Monza

Hamilton's move to Ferrari had been public since the first of February. It had a knock-on effect. Hamilton was taking the Ferrari of Carlos Sainz.

Sainz had no drive for 2025, and he was winning. In March, sixteen days after surgery to remove his appendix, he won the Australian Grand Prix. It was his third Grand Prix win.

Toto Wolff runs the Mercedes team and owns a share of it. That same weekend in Melbourne, he was asked whether Max Verstappen was his number one pick. Yes, he said. You see what his performance levels are.

In June, Wolff said Sainz deserved a top seat, and that Mercedes would not make him wait. Kimi Antonelli, he added, definitely played a part in how the team wanted to reinvent itself. In July, a Spanish newspaper quoted him: with more time to decide, Sainz was still an option.

Sainz did not wait. On the twenty-ninth of July, he signed for Williams, for two years. He wanted to be the boss of his own destiny, he said.

The race winner was off the market.

What Mercedes had was eighteen years old. Andrea Kimi Antonelli had been in its junior programme since he was twelve. He had skipped Formula Three. In Formula Two that summer, he was seventh in the championship, with two wins.

Then, at Monza, Mercedes announced him.

That day, Wolff said he had made up his mind five minutes after Hamilton told him he was leaving, though Mercedes had kept the Verstappen idea open. In March, he had named Verstappen. Both statements are on the record, five months apart.

His reason, he said, was the long term. Now we are prepared to take the risk on maturity.

On the list, Lewis Hamilton's name appears seven times. The last line was still empty. Two years later, Antonelli would come back to Monza and start nineteenth on the grid.

3:36 The bill: three points in nine races, and talks with Verstappen

In 2025, the bill arrived.

Antonelli and Russell drove the same car. In twenty-four qualifying sessions, Russell was ahead twenty-one times. In nine European races, from Imola in May to Monza in September, Antonelli scored three points. In between, in Canada, he finished third.

By the summer break, Mercedes had dropped to third in the constructors' championship, behind Ferrari.

At the Dutch Grand Prix, Wolff was asked about the pressure. I think we have put Kimi under maximum pressure, he said, to be honest. Putting him in the car at Monza the year before, and presenting him there, was maybe a mistake. But Kimi, he said, is a long-term investment.

Antonelli later described that summer himself. He let the pressure destroy him, he said, because he felt he was letting down the people who believed in him. Especially Toto, because he was the main one who took the decision.

Neither Mercedes driver was yet confirmed for 2026, and the team looked elsewhere too. In June, asked about Verstappen, Wolff said the team needed to explore what was happening in the future, and that this changed nothing about George or Kimi. That summer, Mercedes talked to Verstappen. Then, on the thirty-first of July, he said he was staying at Red Bull. A week later, Wolff told an Italian newspaper about the talks. Suddenly Max's future became uncertain, he said, so we talked to him too.

On the fifteenth of October, Mercedes confirmed Russell and Antonelli for 2026. A matter of when, not if, Wolff said.

Then, at the end of the year, Antonelli was second twice in Brazil, in the sprint and the Grand Prix, and third in Las Vegas. Forty points in two weekends. Mercedes finished second in the constructors' championship, eighteen points ahead of Red Bull.

And there was a cost Wolff only named after the title. People were doubters, he said. We had two sponsors leaving us because of that. Because who is this kid?

That year, the list moved on without him. The 2025 title went to Lando Norris. Below it, the last line was still empty. The next season, he would win five Grands Prix in a row.

6:08 The return: China, Japan and five wins in a row

In 2026 the rules changed. New cars, new engines. Mercedes built the fastest car: twelve poles and twelve wins in the first nineteen races. That is part of this story, not a footnote.

But Russell had the same car.

In China, the second race, Russell had a technical problem in the final part of qualifying and managed only one flying lap. On his last run, Antonelli beat that lap by two tenths and took his first Grand Prix pole. At nineteen, he was the youngest polesitter Formula One had ever had.

The next day, he won his first Grand Prix. No Italian had won one since Giancarlo Fisichella, in 2006.

In Japan, he started from pole and was sixth after one lap. He had got his fingers wrong on the clutch. I was very, very mad, he said. He won by almost fourteen seconds, with help from a Safety Car, he admitted, and became the youngest championship leader in the sport's history.

After wins in Miami and Canada came Monaco. In the last two minutes, pole position changed hands three times. His final lap took it back from Max Verstappen, by forty-three thousandths of a second. One of those laps, he said, that we call a magic lap.

On the Sunday, he led all seventy-eight laps, through two Safety Cars, a red flag and a standing restart with eight laps to go. A year earlier, he had finished eighteenth there. It was his fifth win in a row.

At Silverstone, he won the sprint and took pole on the same Saturday. On the Sunday, his car let him down.

At Spa, a Virtual Safety Car cost him the lead to Charles Leclerc. Ten laps from the end, he took it back, and won.

On Saturdays, they were close. Antonelli out-qualified Russell eleven times, Russell him eight.

On Sundays, they were not. In the races, it was fourteen to five. Leave out the races in which one of them retired or broke down, and it was eleven to three. Comparing laps on the same tyres, Antonelli was faster in eleven of fourteen races, by a median of about two tenths of a second a lap. That is this channel's count, from the timing data of the first seventeen races.

Luck does not explain it. Both lost points to their cars. Antonelli twice from second place. Russell from the lead in Canada, from third in the Bahrain Grand Prix, held that year in Malaysia, and then with an engine penalty in Singapore. By this channel's arithmetic, Russell lost more, about thirty points at most. The gap between them is one hundred and thirty.

He made mistakes too. In Baku he hit the wall in qualifying. A very stupid one, he called it. He started sixteenth and finished fifth.

And there was Monza, his home race. Mercedes chose to fit a new engine there and send him to the back of the grid. Sometimes you pay a short-term price, Wolff said.

He started nineteenth. After one lap, he was fourteenth. When a crash at the Parabolica stopped the race on lap two, he was twelfth. By lap ten, he was fifth. On lap eighteen, he went past Russell into the first chicane and led his home Grand Prix.

Russell got back ahead. Under a Virtual Safety Car, Antonelli took fresh tyres, and Russell stayed out on used ones. On lap forty-nine, Antonelli ran through the gravel at the first chicane. Halfway round the next lap, three laps from the end, he passed Russell again, and this time it stayed that way.

Nobody had won a Grand Prix from further back since 1983. No Italian had won the Italian Grand Prix since 1966. It's a dream coming true, he said. It was the circuit where, two years earlier, his first practice session had ended in the barrier.

Nine wins. Sixteen podiums in nineteen races. From the third round on, he led the championship after every race.

With four races to go, he is a hundred and thirty points ahead of Russell, in the same car. A year earlier, Russell had finished a hundred and sixty-nine points ahead of him. A swing of almost three hundred points, across a change of rules.

Back to Mexico City. He led for sixteen laps. One lap after his pit stop, a Safety Car came out. He only needed ninth. At the restart, he dived past Charles Leclerc into the first corner, for third.

On the lap before the last, he said, he was already crying. He could not see clearly ahead. He could see two Ferraris somehow, through the tears. There was only one Ferrari in front of him. All the memories since karting, all the way to here.

On the podium, the two drivers ahead of him lifted him onto their shoulders. Max Verstappen. And Lewis Hamilton. I will definitely frame the picture, he said.

Kimi Antonelli, world champion. The first Italian since Alberto Ascari, in 1953. Seventy-three years.

And on the list, the last line is no longer empty.

11:46 A calculated risk, and what the record shows

So how did the teenager in the barrier get onto the list? In 2024, Wolff said Mercedes was prepared to take the risk. After the title, he called it a calculated risk, not a real risk.

What the record shows is narrower. In the summer of 2024, a race winner was available, and Mercedes did not sign him. Then, through a run of three points in nine races, Mercedes kept him in the car.

A team can make the call. Only the driver can make it pay.

Every number in this film has a source, and you will find them all below the video.

Subscribe, and the files reach you.