In the weeks preceding the 2024 Formula 1 season, following the sensational news of Lewis Hamilton’s dramatic ditching of Mercedes for the allure and pageantry of Ferrari, the next quandary was obvious. How would Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff go about replacing the six-time champion who spearheaded the greatest driver-team relationship in the history of the sport?

Typically in the modern-day F1 ecosystem, the omnipresent Netflix boom mic was best placed.

“Have you talked to Toto yet?” Lewis Hamilton asked Carlos Sainz, the man he was replacing at the Scuderia and therefore unattached for 2025, as aired on Season 7 of Drive to Survive. “I haven’t talked to Toto yet…” Sainz replied. “Which makes me feel like if he really had an interest, he would have already called me.”

There would be no call. At least not one indicating a straight-driver swap would be forthcoming. In those first few months, Wolff kept his cards close to his chest. Sainz, Lando Norris, Fernando Alonso and Alex Albon were among the obligatory names linked. He flirted with Red bull’s Max Verstappen and made no secret of that lust. Yet the Austrian always had the sense of a man steering away from the staples on the grid; a left-field wildcard pick was incoming.

Wolff would later say: “I made up my mind five minutes after Lewis Hamilton told me that he’s going to Ferrari. Obviously we were discussing other options and looking at the Max idea – we didn’t discount it completely with looking at what happened at Red Bull.

“But instinctively that is the line-up that I always wanted, bearing in mind the fast-tracking that we did with Kimi and everything related there too, but that was immediately what I wanted to do.”

Kimi Antonelli was just 17, fighting for podiums in Formula Two, when he found out that Wolff had plumped for the Italian teenager to replace one of the sport’s greatest-ever drivers. He was just 18 when he smashed into the wall at Parabolica in Monza – a chastening first weekend outing in an F1 car. And he was just 19 when he won his first race, in China in March; a Sunday which would set the tone for the year ahead.

Now, having just turned 20 in August, the curly-haired, happy-go-lucky Antonelli is on the cusp of his first world championship. It is a near-formality that he will become the youngest-ever champion in the history of the sport, an accolade currently held by Sebastian Vettel, who was 23 in 2010.

The boy from Bologna, ironically just 30 miles east of Ferrari’s HQ in Maranello, has a 102-point lead heading into this weekend’s United States Grand Prix in Austin. If he wins the race and second-placed George Russell finishes ninth or lower and third-placed Lewis Hamilton comes home fifth or lower, he will be crowned champion with five rounds remaining.

It has been an astonishing turnaround.

A year ago, Antonelli was a rookie lacking in confidence after a damaging European summer season which included four retirements in six races. A first-lap crash in Austria into Max Verstappen – with the Dutchman unusually unflustered afterwards – and qualifying 18th at Spa were particular nadirs. Wolff stood by his protege, acknowledging his inexperience and rawness.

There would be less room for sympathy this year, however, particularly early on as Mercedes fulfilled their tags as pre-season favourites. Much like Norris up against Oscar Piastri last year, Russell was declared the heavy favourite with the bookies. Russell won the season-opener in Australia, with Antonelli spinning into the wall in practice. One race in, another inaugural British champion looked extremely likely.

After that, Antonelli won five consecutive races. In total, he has finished higher than Russell in 12 out of 17 grands prix. He even pipped his teammate at Monza, having started at the back of the field, in an iconic home race which will live long in the memory. On the whole, his driving has been exemplary, barely putting a foot wrong in qualifying and in his racecraft. A modicum of calm professionalism, mixed in with a charisma it is near-impossible not to like.

In the aforementioned Netflix episode, Sainz later asks Hamilton: “Do you think they [Mercedes] are declining?” The Briton considers the query and shakes his head: “No, I don’t think so.”

He was right. Not only has Wolff been fully justified in his selection of Antonelli but, conversely, Hamilton’s choice to join Ferrari has proved to be the wrong one (in contrast to 2012, when he joined Mercedes from McLaren). Ferrari, of course, could prove to be the pacesetters next year. The Circuit of the Americas this weekend could go some way in telling us where Mercedes are, with an upgraded car and one eye already on 2027. Red Bull are also on a hot streak, with Max Verstappen winning the last two races in Malaysia and Singapore.

But Austin is all about Antonelli, who, round by round, has vindicated Wolff’s courageous driver pick two years ago. For the Austrian, under pressure himself after Mercedes’ struggles in the ground-effect era, a far simpler choice would have been Sainz, Norris or Alonso. Someone tried-and-tested. Someone consistently able to record podiums. Someone... safe.

Yet sometimes, to unearth a champion, you need to take a gamble. And Wolff’s has paid off big time.