Kimi Antonelli sits 50 points clear of Lewis Hamilton at the top of the drivers’ standings, holding the lead he first took at Suzuka in late March and has not surrendered since. Six wins from his first eleven starts is the raw number. The context around it is what has the paddock reaching for the history books.
The Italian, who turns 20 later this month, has spent the summer being asked where a title in his second F1 season would rank. He is not entirely comfortable with the question.
“Well, for sure, I did not expect to find myself in this position,” Antonelli told GPblog during the summer break.
“The car has been extremely good, the team has done an incredible job and, on my side, I try to maximise every opportunity I have.”
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Max Verstappen, four times a champion and now sixth in the standings on 109 points, gave his own read on the Mercedes rookie at the Hungarian Grand Prix.
“If you look at the front, Kimi has done a really good job. Really strong, really solid, being the strongest in the team,” the Red Bull driver said.
“As a 19-year-old, so far, I think he’s been rock solid.”
The three names on the shortlist
Sky Sports this week set Antonelli alongside three modern surprise winners. Fernando Alonso broke Ferrari’s grip in 2005 with only a single grand prix win to his name and became, at 24, the youngest world champion of his era. Jenson Button rode a Brawn car nobody expected to exist to the 2009 title. Nico Rosberg beat Hamilton to the 2016 crown after two consecutive years of being the second Mercedes.
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None of them arrived at their championship season with zero career victories. Antonelli did. His rookie 2025 delivered one sprint pole and three podiums, and the assumption inside and outside Mercedes was that this year would be another apprenticeship.
Instead: pole and win in China, victory in Japan, four in a row through Monaco. An engine failure at Barcelona and a wheel-guard problem that dropped him to 15th at Silverstone bled points, but never the lead.
Norris broke through only in Hungary
Reigning world champion Lando Norris is fifth on 128 points, 91 behind Antonelli, in a McLaren season the team itself calls disappointing. Norris took his first win of the year in Budapest, but has told reporters McLaren is roughly “three months behind” its rivals on car development.
Verstappen’s numbers are starker still: no wins in eleven rounds, with a best finish of second, most recently at the Hungarian Grand Prix. The four-time champion is scoring, just not enough to be part of the title arithmetic.
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That leaves George Russell, third on 160 points, as the closest theoretical threat. The second Mercedes is 59 back, and has been out-qualified and out-scored by his team-mate at every phase of the season.
The next test is a familiar circuit for Mercedes and a new one for Antonelli as a championship leader: the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort on Sunday, 23 August.
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