Kimi Antonelli still has bigger tests to come as he closes in on the Formula 1 world championship, David Coulthard says.

Antonelli only needs to finish ninth at this weekend’s Mexico City Grand Prix to become the youngest world champion ever. At the age of 20, he will beat Sebastian Vettel’s 2010 record by three years.

Having driven a dominant car at such a young age, Antonelli has a unique opportunity to break the biggest records in Formula 1. But Coulthard still needs to see a larger sample of excellence.

Would Mercedes have won the championship without Kimi Antonelli?

David Coulthard: Kimi Antonelli will start feeling pressure in the coming years

Speaking on the Up to Speed podcast, Coulthard warned that some drivers have briefly looked ‘amazing’ before a sudden decline.

He pointed to the example of Jacques Villeneuve, who won the world championship at Williams in 1997 but never took another Grand Prix victory.

And he also mentioned Daniel Ricciardo, who was the leading threat to the dominant Mercedes drivers at the start of the turbo/hybrid era before Max Verstappen arrived at Red Bull and made the team his own.

Ricciardo’s high-risk move to Renault in 2019 backfired, and he spent his final years at McLaren/AlphaTauri/RB trying in vain to recapture former glories.

Coulthard is confident Antonelli’s career won’t follow a similar trajectory, but says he’s not guaranteed to simply get better and better.

“I think he’s just instinctively driving,” he said. “I think we’ll find out more about Kimi not in this first world championship, [but in] how he defends it, how he then matures into his 22nd year, his 23rd year.

“That’s when we’ll really know who he is as a complete driver. There have been examples of guys who have been amazing, but one-hit wonders.

“I’m thinking Jacques Villeneuve, I’m thinking Daniel Ricciardo. [He] was the coming man, then suddenly the wheels came off the wagon and it just didn’t work for him.

“I don’t hope that, of course, for Kimi, or any driver, and I don’t think that will happen, but that’s where I sit when it comes to pressure. I don’t think he feels it yet.”

Antonelli struggled in his first season at Mercedes, at one point enduring a run of two points finishes in nine races. George Russell was nearly half a second quicker in qualifying on average.

Russell scored nine of the team’s 12 podiums and 319 of their 469 points – not far short of 70%.

The learnings from that first season, in which his suitability for a Mercedes drive was questioned, and the regulation changes have turned Antonelli into a different driver.

Critics may put an asterisk next to Antonelli’s title given the erratic behaviour of the new power units, but one only needs to listen to the Italian’s competitors to gauge the quality of his performances.

Mercedes may not start 2027 with the buffer they had this year, but Antonelli will nonetheless have the opportunity to prove his success isn’t an anomaly.