Before the 2026 season had begun there was something of a consensus within Formula One. Mercedes appeared to have the fastest car and George Russell was favourite for the title. Beside him in what was indeed a dominant Mercedes, his teenage teammate, Kimi Antonelli, was the prodigious talent who was expected to require honing after a tricky rookie season. Said consensus lasted one race, by the sixth it had been turned on its head and Antonelli was squarely on his way to being champion.

Few had doubted that the then 19-year-old Italian would prove to be strong in a car that for the first two-thirds of the season was the class of the field but for Antonelli to come out of the blocks with such verve, aggressive skill and also the judgment and at times maturity of a veteran was revelatory. As the youngest F1 world champion and Italy’s first since Alberto Ascari in 1953, Antonelli made history this year but it was the way he did it which truly caught the eye.

As the sport’s youngest world champion at 20 years old crossed the line in tears, wracked with emotion at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, quite what it meant to him was clear. As it was for his his mother, father and sister, the family with whom he is so close and who have played a key part in his success. They embraced and shed their own tears too.

It might have been an inevitability for some time now but when he climbed from his car to the roaring approval of the fans in the hugely atmospheric stadium section it was understandable that the Italian, only just out of his teens, could barely take it in.

“We did it,” he said. “I wouldn’t be here without Mercedes, without my family. This moment is one that will live for ever. I am speechless. I am just trying to process this moment.”

In his rookie season Antonelli had struggled with the ground-effect cars as he came to terms with F1 and endured a run of poor performances mid-season. Questions were asked about whether he had been promoted too soon. They were answered emphatically this year but not quite from the off.

At the season opener in Australia he crashed out in final practice with an air of the over-eager charger that was costly and familiar from 2025. The repairs to his car meant he almost missed qualifying and Russell went on to win. The bookies it seemed had called it right.

What followed, for all that it was so early in the season, was nonetheless gamechanging. Fifth place in the sprint in China including a penalty for hitting Isack Hadjar was not entirely auspicious but it was the last foot put wrong in Shanghai. Having become F1’s youngest driver to claim pole he converted with an inch-perfect run to take his debut grand prix win by five seconds from Russell.

With a handle on how to maximise the driving style required by the energy management of the new cars and a feel for it that was tantalisingly out of reach for his teammate, Antonelli was on another level. Victory in Japan after dropping to sixth at the start followed, albeit with good fortune from a safety car call, and with it a championship lead he would not relinquish again.

Miami fell to the Italian, then Canada. The narrative had changed, Russell and the rest of the grid were being schooled by the kid with only one season under his belt.

If emphasis were needed as to the who was calling the shots Antonelli performed emphatically in Monaco. He saw off a fierce charge from Max Verstappen to claim pole and then made an indelible mark with victory on the streets of the principality. He held his lead from the off and was flawless beneath the looming walls before having to hold his nerve to see off two restarts that had eradicated the 30-second lead he had built.

The second, a standing start alongside the seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton was as nervy a test as one might ask of any driver, let alone one in only his second season. Antonelli passed with flying colours, held his line, the place, and the lead to the flag.

Questions were asked of him repeatedly and every time he had the answers. If there were weaknesses in his game, that he might be impetuous or overexcitable, by Monaco they had been banished by the calm, cold commitment of a champion in waiting.

It was his fifth consecutive win, a record run after a debut victory and with it he had amassed a lead of 66 points over Hamilton and 68 over Russell.

Russell to be fair had endured more than his fair share of bad luck and it was undeniably a factor but not decisive. The safety car at Suzuka which benefited Antonelli cost the British driver, he was unfairly penalised for pit lane speeding at Monaco and then had an engine failure while leading in Canada, a body blow. Yet he admitted at the time that he was not as at home with the car as Antonelli and it was visible on track, the Italian often quicker even when behind his teammate.

This was demonstrated in Barcelona when he had passed Russell to take second place with five laps to go. However, the Italian too had to weather his own share of misfortune. Having taken second place he ground to a halt with an electrical shutdown to his immense disappointment and that of some observers missing the good old days when engines used to at least give out with a bang.

That ill luck was followed by a wheel shield failure at Silverstone dropping him out of contention just as he had been challenging for the lead. The resulting points swing put Russell within 25 points but that was as close as the British driver was to come.

McLaren and Ferrari both came at Mercedes taking two wins apiece but while Mercedes no longer had it all their own way Antonelli consistently performed. His brief mid-season frustration behind him, a dominant win in Belgium was followed by two podiums. Russell did cop some more bad luck but there were two further races which defined why the season belonged to the 20-year-old.

The first at his home race in Monza where he started from 19th after an engine change-prompted grid penalty but went on to take the win was a masterclass, proving he had the race craft, control and judgment to scythe through the field from a seemingly impossible position. It was another blow to Russell who had started from second and was expectant of clawing back points yet dropped a further seven.

Only one driver has come back to win from further down the grid, John Watson from 22nd at the Long Beach GP in 1983. Watson’s drive is long remembered, as will be Antonelli’s.

The second was of a similar vein; it indicated the depth of his talent and what greater heights the Italian may go on to reach. In a season marked by only marginal errors, misreading yellow flags in qualifying in Austria, and a penalty for failing to slow under yellow in qualifying in Hungary among them, the most egregious by far was his crash in qualifying at Baku, where Russell went on to take pole by a huge margin.

Antonelli admitted the mistake was unnecessary and started from 16th. Yet how he dealt with it illustrated a champion’s mindset. Instead of charging at the race trying to make up places and taking chances on a circuit he knew could bite, he played the percentages, moved through the field with care and decisiveness, even as chaos and crashes at a restart caused him to pick up floor damage making the car a brute to handle. He kept his head and his nerve to grind out fifth, despite still castigating himself for the accident in qualifying.

He had accepted the blame and learned from it, then assessed his position, how to handle it and what course was best in the bigger picture of the title fight. Not all titles are won with derring-do, but they can be lost. Antonelli had dropped points but with as much damage limitation as might reasonably be expected, the title inched inexorably closer.

A similarly cool head saw off a late resurgence from Verstappen in an impressively improved Red Bull as Antonelli ground out podiums behind him. Indeed, grabbing third in Singapore with a dash past Lando Norris and Hamilton as they fought each another typified why the title was all but in his hands.

An emphatic victory in Austin followed, his ninth, which Wolff hailed as one of his best, which was not quite enough to seal the deal but it left him so far ahead that ninth or better would suffice this weekend here in Mexico, where he duly closed it out with a nerveless run to take third place.

Better than anyone had anticipated, perhaps even than his Mercedes team might have hoped, Antonelli delivered on his promise in emphatic style and prompted a new consensus: that there is surely only more to come.