Antonelli world champion at 20 years and 68 days, F1’s youngest ever, as Verstappen wins in Mexico

Kimi Antonelli is Formula 1’s youngest-ever world champion. He sealed the title with third place at the Mexico City Grand Prix, aged 20 years and 68 days, and with several races of the season still to run.

The Mercedes driver beat Sebastian Vettel’s long-standing age record by more than three years. He is also the first Italian champion since Alberto Ascari in 1953. Max Verstappen won the race for Red Bull, but the day belonged to the new Antonelli world champion narrative and to a Ferrari row that nearly overshadowed it.

How Antonelli secured the title

Antonelli arrived in Mexico needing little more than a clean afternoon. Only a win for team-mate George Russell or Lewis Hamilton could have delayed his coronation, and even then a finish in the points would have been enough. Russell, who started on the front row, made a poor start. He later picked up a 10-second penalty for a collision with Isack Hadjar and finished sixth.

The race was chaotic. A virtual safety car, two full safety cars and a red flag all disrupted it. Valtteri Bottas’s Cadillac suffered a front suspension failure and hit the barriers at Turn One, which halted the race. Bottas walked away, gave a thumbs-up and was released from the medical centre. A later crash between Arvid Lindblad and Oscar Piastri brought out the second safety car.

Antonelli stayed out of trouble throughout. He ran fourth early, passed Leclerc after the restart and then sat third in a tight three-car train for the final sprint. Verstappen, Hamilton and Antonelli finished nose to tail, with Verstappen 0.799 seconds clear of Hamilton and Antonelli 3.207 seconds behind the winner.

Emotion on the radio, records in the books

Antonelli’s reaction was the human heart of the day. When race engineer Peter Bonnington told him he was champion, he could barely speak. “We did it. Thank you so much,” he managed. He later said he had eased off on the last lap because he could not see the track through his emotion. His parents and sister were waiting for him, and the team mobbed him.

He admitted to feeling “a bit more tense” this weekend, but said he now intended to enjoy the rest of the season. Bonnington reminded him that this was “just the first chapter”.

Mercedes now lead the constructors’ standings with 630 points to Ferrari’s 504. Al Jazeera, citing Reuters, reports they could clinch that title in Brazil next weekend. Antonelli’s own margin was a decisive 119 points at the end of the race.

Ferrari’s internal feud overshadows the podium

The sub-plot was at Ferrari. Hamilton took pole, the 105th of his career, and led into the first corners. But Charles Leclerc went around the outside at the Turn Four chicane, ran across the grass and took the lead. Verstappen slipped past the wide Hamilton into second. Hamilton’s radio message was blunt: he had been “pushed out by my own teammate”.

Stewards gave Leclerc a five-second penalty. That is half the usual punishment, because Hamilton had also run wide and neither car could have made the corner. Hamilton never got ahead of Verstappen again. He was visibly frustrated afterwards, believing Ferrari had the pace to win. “We have to hold some serious talks behind the scenes,” he said.

Verstappen called the opening lap the key to his race, having charged from fifth to second. He said he was “sweating” to keep Hamilton behind at the end. The sources differ slightly on how many wins that makes this season, so that figure is best treated with caution. All agree it was a record-extending sixth victory for him in Mexico.

Whatever follows at Ferrari, the image that will last is two champions with 11 titles between them leading the new Antonelli world champion across the line. It looked like a changing of the guard.

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File photo: Kimi Antonelli at the Melbourne Walk during the 2026 Australian Grand Prix (028A7923) cropped.jpg by Yu Chu Chin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.