Mercedes deputy team principal Bradley Lord admits Andrea Kimi Antonelli has been exceeding their expectations on the track in 2026, and also just as much off the track.

Lord believes everyone at Mercedes had high hopes for Antonelli when they announced him as Lewis Hamilton’s heir for the 2025 season. But he doubts anyone in Brackley can honestly say they expected to already be seeing the 20-year-old reach the levels that he has in 2026.

Antonelli has produced another historic campaign so soon into his fledgling F1 career, and is now on the cusp of becoming the youngest-ever drivers’ champion as early as this weekend.

The odds are against it, but Antonelli can win the 2026 title in the United States GP if results go his way this Sunday at the Circuit of the Americas in the 18th out of this year’s 23 rounds.

Would Lewis Hamilton have beaten Kimi Antonelli in the Mercedes this season?

Guenther Steiner doesn't think so!

Bradley Lord hails how Andrea Kimi Antonelli made an autism charity feel like ‘winners’

Antonelli must win the United States GP to stand any chance of winning the 2026 F1 drivers’ championship in Austin, Texas at his Mercedes teammate George Russell’s expense. It would also mark the Italian’s ninth win of the campaign, despite entering 2026 without a win in F1.

Mercedes relished watching Antonelli open his F1 account with five consecutive race wins in China, Japan, Miami, Canada and Monaco before adding wins in Belgium, Italy and Spain. He has also taken six pole positions so far in 2026, despite also starting 2026 without any poles.

Deputy Mercedes team principal Lord believes no one in the team expected Antonelli’s form in his second season on the grid to be so strong, having not enjoyed a perfect rookie term in 2025. Mercedes’ failed rear suspension update in 2025 ruined Antonelli’s confidence and it took him until the final rounds of the term to respond with P2 in Sao Paulo and P3 in Vegas.

“To call it a meteoric rise is completely appropriate,” Lord told The i Paper. “He’s performing at a level we believed he had the potential to perform at, but I don’t think anyone, being completely honest, would say they expected to see this in his second season in the sport.”

But beyond what Antonelli is achieving on the track, with his wins in Monaco and Italy two of Lord’s highlights, the Mercedes chief respects the Bologna boy as much off the circuit (if not more). One of the standout moments that comes to Lord’s mind was how he treated a group of children when attending an event with the autism charity PizzAut Onlus in Austria.

Lord claimed: “I remember the guy telling me the people they work with in the restaurant often are left feeling in life and society that they’re sort of at the back of the grid and they don’t matter. And Kimi gave them the feeling of being on the front row, being on pole and being winners.”

PizzAut Onlus is a charity based in Milan, Italy that works with young people with autism to help them gain dignity and autonomy through work. Antonelli also met with the charity in the days after his historic home victory at Monza in September, when the Bologna boy put his back-of-the-grid penalty for a new power unit behind him to win from P19 on the grid.

Given Antonelli’s Italian GP win from P19 on the grid, PizzAut Onlus gifted him a T-shirt with the following message, “You’re not normal is the best compliment anyone’s ever given me,” on it as “someone who starts last, recovers 19 positions and arrives first is not normal!”