Kimi Antonelli is Formula 1’s youngest world champion. The Mercedes driver finished third at the Mexico City Grand Prix on Sunday and clinched the 2026 title at 20 years and 68 days old, ESPN reported.
Updated November 2: added his junior racing record.
That breaks Sebastian Vettel’s record by 3 years and 65 days. Antonelli is also the first Italian champion since Alberto Ascari in 1953, and he did it in only his second season in the sport.
He sealed it with four races left. Max Verstappen won the race for Red Bull, but no one could catch the 20-year-old from Bologna in the standings.
A third place was more than he needed in Mexico City
Antonelli arrived in Mexico needing only a ninth-place finish, whatever teammate George Russell and Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton did, according to Formula 1’s race report. Those two were the only drivers still in mathematical contention.
He started fourth in the 71-lap race. Hamilton took his first pole position for Ferrari, but the start turned chaotic. Charles Leclerc ran off the track while passing his own teammate and drew a five-second penalty, and Russell fell from second to sixth after contact with Isack Hadjar, the FIA’s race summary said.
A suspension failure on Valtteri Bottas’s Cadillac then caused a red flag that lasted almost 40 minutes. A late collision between Oscar Piastri and Arvid Lindblad brought out a safety car with eight laps to go.
Antonelli stayed out of trouble. He passed Leclerc late and finished 4.006 seconds behind Verstappen, who won by 0.799 seconds over Hamilton for his sixth victory in Mexico City.
“Yeah, we did it! We did it!” Antonelli said in the FIA’s post-race press conference. “It’s one that will live forever, and I just am speechless.”
The weekend was harder than the result suggests. ESPN reported that he had been dealing with a viral illness and skipped media day. Antonelli said only that “physically, I haven’t been in the best shape,” and that qualifying had gone badly.
He beat Vettel’s record by more than three years
Vettel was 23 years and 134 days old when he won his first title with Red Bull in 2010, according to ESPN. That mark had stood for 16 years. Antonelli took it at 20 years and 68 days, according to ESPN’s Mexico City report.
Vettel had already said he wouldn’t mind. Asked by PlanetF1 in September whether losing the record would be bittersweet, he said: “No, I’d be very happy for him.”
The age record is the headline, but it caps a season of firsts. Antonelli became the youngest pole-sitter in F1 history at the Chinese Grand Prix in March and the youngest championship leader after winning in Japan. By August he had equaled Ascari’s Italian record of six wins in a season, ESPN noted.
There’s a quirk American fans saw up close.
When he won the U.S. Grand Prix in Austin on Oct. 25, the Associated Press noted that under Texas law, where the drinking age is 21, he was too young to drink the podium champagne. The new world champion doesn’t turn 21 until August 2027.
How a doubted rookie turned into a runaway leader
Mercedes signed Antonelli as a child. “They were the ones who took the gamble when I was 11, and they were the ones who believed in me all the way,” he said on Sunday.
Mercedes says he formally joined its junior program in April 2019, at 12, after a run of karting titles. That comes from the team’s driver profile.
He won the Italian and German Formula 4 titles in 2022. A year later he took the Formula Regional European and Middle East crowns.
In 2024 he raced one Formula 2 season with Prema and finished sixth. He also became the youngest multiple winner in that series’ history, Mercedes says.
The team promoted him straight from Formula 2 to replace Hamilton, who left for Ferrari, at the start of 2025. He admitted on Sunday that he had moments as a rookie that made him look unready, and that critics noticed. “Some people said that I wasn’t belonging to Formula One or I wasn’t ready for it,” he said.
This year, Russell was the pre-season favorite in a Mercedes that ESPN called the grid’s dominant car, and Russell won the opener in Melbourne. Antonelli answered with his first career win in China, the first of five straight victories.
He called the second of those, in Japan, the real turning point. “Suzuka was the first turning point because it was when I started to lead the championship,” he said.
He never gave the lead back. His win in Austin was his ninth of the season and left him 123 points clear of Russell with five races and 125 points still on offer, the AP reported.
The final points table shows how lopsided it was
After Mexico City, Antonelli has 380 points, according to the official F1 standings. Verstappen is second with 261, Hamilton third with 259 and Russell fourth with 250.
That is a 119-point gap with 19 of 23 rounds complete. By our count, Antonelli has averaged 20 points per round. That is more than a second-place finish, worth 18 points, every weekend since March.
The gap also shows how far ahead Mercedes has been all year. Our earlier explainer covered why Mercedes came under scrutiny over its engine compression ratio before the season began. Mercedes leads the constructors’ championship with 639 points to Ferrari’s 504, Sports Illustrated reported.
Rivals took the defeat graciously. “What a season he had, and, you know, to do that also at such an age, I think it’s just really, really impressive,” said Verstappen, a four-time champion. Hamilton called it “pretty phenomenal.”
Four races left, including Las Vegas
The title is settled, but the season isn’t.
Four rounds remain on the 2026 calendar: Brazil from November 6 to 8, Las Vegas from November 19 to 21, Qatar from November 27 to 29 and Abu Dhabi from December 4 to 6.
Antonelli said he will run a special helmet in São Paulo as a tribute to Ayrton Senna, and that he expects to keep racing with No. 12. “We still want to finish on a high,” he said.
The rules are moving again, too. F1 is already planning engine changes for 2027, which will test whether Mercedes keeps its edge. Antonelli’s contract runs through at least the end of 2027.
His next start is the São Paulo Grand Prix this weekend, where he finished second as a rookie last year.
