Nine grands prix without a point. Two sponsors on the way out. An 18-year-old handed the seat of a seven-time world champion. Toto Wolff has now spelt out just how exposed his gamble on Kimi Antonelli looked from inside Mercedes.
“I don’t think he would have lasted in other teams after an F2 season, which wasn’t overwhelming, and this spell of nine races without any points,” Wolff told RacingNews365.
The admission arrives with the 2026 title already on Antonelli’s mantelpiece. His third-place finish at the Mexico City Grand Prix locked up the drivers’ championship with four races to spare, making him the youngest world champion in Formula 1 history at 20.
Two sponsors walked away
Mercedes confirmed two commercial partners departed when the team promoted Antonelli straight from a sixth-place F2 campaign with Prema into Lewis Hamilton’s vacated seat. Wolff told RacingNews365 the pair walked over the same question the paddock was asking: “Who is this kid?”
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The doubts hardened across a rookie 2025 campaign that, as Wolff conceded, included a run of nine races without a point.
A reset arrived in Melbourne at the start of 2026, where Antonelli opened with a second-place finish, then claimed his maiden grand prix victory at the Chinese Grand Prix.
Wolff rejects the hindsight praise
“We just trusted our data, trusted our feeling about the personality and the potential,” Wolff told the outlet.
Antonelli is the first Italian to win the drivers’ title since Alberto Ascari in 1953, and Mercedes’ first drivers’ champion since Hamilton in 2020.
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Constructors’ title in reach at Interlagos
Mercedes lead Ferrari by 126 points in the constructors’ standings with four rounds to run and can seal their first teams’ title since 2021 at the São Paulo Grand Prix, where they need to outscore the Scuderia by three points on Sunday.
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