He was five years old when he first sat in a kart. Not because anyone pushed him. Because the garage was home.

Kimi Antonelli grew up in Bologna, in the middle of Italy's Motor Valley, with the smell of fuel in the air and his father Marco's racing team, AKM Motorsport, as his playground. Marco had raced touring cars and GTs himself. Kimi didn't need to be told to love racing. He just absorbed it.

By 2015, he was winning. By 2019, Mercedes had signed him at 12.

That decision tells you everything about how this story was going to go. Mercedes didn't wait to see if he would make it. They decided he would, and they built his whole career around that belief. He joined their junior programme in April 2019, aged 12.

Karting was where he learned to fight. In 2019 he won the WSK Euro Series and Super Master Series in OK Junior and finished runner-up in the FIA European Karting Championship. A year later he stepped up to the senior OK class and won the European title outright, then defended it in 2021. He was 14 when he became the youngest senior European champion ever.

He wasn't just fast. He was relentless. From 21st on the grid to win a final. That was Kimi even then. The jump to cars should have slowed him down. It didn't.

In 2021 he tried Italian Formula 4 and took three podiums in nine races. In 2022 he won both the Italian and German F4 titles in the same year — 22 wins, 21 poles and 27 podiums across the two championships. He even won gold for Italy at the Motorsport Games with a broken wrist.

In 2023 he did it again in Formula Regional. Middle East champion in the winter, then European champion by Alpine in the summer, five wins at the first attempt.

Then came the gamble. Mercedes skipped Formula 3 completely and put him straight into Formula 2 for 2024.

It was the first time things didn't go perfectly. He finished sixth. But he still became the youngest multiple winner in F2 history with wins at Silverstone and Budapest, and he got his first taste of an F1 weekend in FP1 at Monza.

That hard year mattered. It taught him how to lose.

Because in 2025, Mercedes did the unthinkable. When Lewis Hamilton left for Ferrari, they put an 18-year-old rookie in his seat.

His debut in Melbourne was pure Kimi. Started 16th, finished 4th, became the third-youngest driver ever to start an F1 race. In Miami he became the youngest driver to take a pole position of any kind when he claimed P1 for the Sprint Race.

His rookie season was messy, like all rookie seasons are. Seventh overall, 150 points, three podiums. Between Imola and Zandvoort he scored points only twice in nine races. People questioned the gamble.

Then 2026 happened.
P2 in Melbourne. First Grand Prix win in China. Second win in Japan, where he became the youngest championship leader ever. Then it just kept coming — Miami, Canada, Monaco, Spain, the United States. An unprecedented five-win streak.

At Monza, his home race, he started 19th and still won.

By the time he got to Mexico City for Round 19, he had 16 podiums for the year and a lead that felt impossible to lose. He didn't need to win. Third place was enough.

He crossed the line behind Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton, and cried into the radio: "Thank you so much! We did it, we did it!"

At 20 years and 68 days old, he was world champion.

The youngest in history, beating Sebastian Vettel's record by more than two years. The first Italian champion since Alberto Ascari in 1953, ending a 73-year wait. Mercedes' fourth drivers' champion, and the sport's 36th in all.

Kimi enters Interlagos racing circuit in Brazil, head held high, knowing that his idol will be proud.

Because this wasn't luck. This was 15 years of work — from a five-year-old in a kart at Galliano Park to a 20-year-old standing on top of Formula 1 — finally paying off all at once.

And if he really is just getting started, then the rest of the grid should do their homework and know that the boy from Bologna isn't here to mess around.

Congratulations Kimi Antonelli, World F1 Champion.