Kimi Antonelli clinched his maiden Formula 1 Drivers’ Championship with a third-place finish at the Mexico City Grand Prix.

He almost did not finish the race.

Speaking on the High Performance Racing podcast, Mercedes Deputy Team Principal Bradley Lord talked about what Mercedes found following the Mexico City Grand Prix, and just how close Antonelli was to retiring the car ahead of the checkered flag.

“We got the car back after the race, took the floor off the bottom – covered in oil,” exclaimed Lord.

“Sump cracked and Kimi said he thinks about four laps from the end he could start to feel the engine just starting to struggle, so [he was] right on the edge of retirement of that race and yet it held together.”

But Antonelli put himself in position to take the final podium spot with a daring overtake of Charles Leclerc, putting himself on the podium alongside Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton, so he could celebrate the championship in style.

Lord talked about that overtake as well.

“He’s a racer and that was what was going to put him on the podium. Charles had had that massive lock-up at the restart. His tire was down to the canvas,” described Lord.

“They were talking about boxing because of it, so Kimi saw an opportunity and it was, I think, the cleanest Turn 1 overtake we saw all day – on the brakes, ran him through the apex, and it was absolutely brilliant,” continued Lord. “That’s one of the things Kimi has. Even in Singapore where Lewis and Lando [Norris] were sort of having their coming together, you just watch how he drives those four or five corners in Singapore to pick off two spaces against the reigning World Champion and the most successful driver the sport’s ever seen battling with old and degrading tires.”

Lord also talked about the massive improvement Antonelli made from his rookie season — where some wondered if he was even cut out for life on the F1 grid — to becoming a World Champion in just his second year in the sport.

“If we go back to last season … Kimi started some way off in qualifying pace and race pace,” began Lord. “And you saw the race pace trend basically coming closer and closer to George [Russell, Antonelli’s Mercedes teammate] as the year went on.

“And that was basically Kimi’s year. Three phases to it. He had the very good, bright start phase that went up until Miami, we had the difficult bit in the middle where we changed the suspension in the car and that cost him his confidence. We saw that run of races where he didn’t score any points and George was much better able to handle the trickiness of the car, basically.

‘But then from Baku onwards, after a bit of a heart-to-hard after the race weekend with Toto [Wolff] and Bono [Peter Bonnington, Antonelli’s engineer], Kimi was able to find a process to really lean into the team and how he was working with Bono and all of his engineering group … and find his way to prepare to take each session by session, and each step by step, and we saw a massive upswing in his performance in the last part of the season.

“And what’s been amazing about Kimi is the speed at which he’s been able to put all of that together. So not every driver would be able to learn all the lessons of those three different phases, almost like three years’ worth of racing, put them together over the winter, and then come out of the blocks as the way he did in Melbourne, and that’s been really impressive.”

Now Antonelli and the team can turn their attention to clinching the Constructors’ Championship, which can be accomplished this weekend with a double-podium finish in the São Paulo Grand Prix.