{"id":3649,"date":"2026-11-02T10:03:57","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T05:03:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=3649"},"modified":"2026-11-02T10:03:57","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T05:03:57","slug":"antonelli-makes-history-as-youngest-f1-champion-at-20-years-old","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=3649","title":{"rendered":"Antonelli makes history as youngest F1 champion at 20 years old"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A tearful Kimi Antonelli became Formula One\u2019s youngest world champion at 20 years and 68 days old on Sunday when he finished third for Mercedes in a red-flagged and restarted \u200bMexico City Grand Prix won by Red Bull\u2019s Max Verstappen.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first Italian champion since 1953 sobbed with joy over the team radio as he took the chequered flag at the high-altitude \u200cAutodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, with his overall lead now an unassailable 119 points.<\/p>\n

Ferrari\u2019s Lewis Hamilton started from pole position and took a close second place \u2013 after clashing with teammate Charles Leclerc \u2013 on an afternoon of drama with two safety cars, multiple crashes and an agonising 33-minute halt with 25 of the 71 laps remaining.<\/p>\n

\u201cGet in there, Kimi. Champion of the world,\u201d said his race engineer Peter Bonnington, a regular target for the young driver\u2019s practical jokes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did it thank you so much,\u201d gasped the Italian, whose parents and sister \u200bwere there to embrace him when he stepped out of the car. He was then mobbed by his pit crew.<\/p>\n

The previous youngest champion was Germany\u2019s Sebastian Vettel, who took the first of his four \u200bwith Red Bull at 23 years and 134 days in 2010.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m speechless. I\u2019m trying to process what has just happened,\u201d said Antonelli in comments to the crowd. \u201cIt\u2019s \u2060been an incredible season, and to share this podium with Max and Lewis is truly incredible. And looking forward to some more battles in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis weekend I did feel a bit more tense, but I\u2019m just \u200bso happy that we got it done, and now we can enjoy the rest of the season,\u201d he added, with an Italian flag wrapped around his shoulders on the podium and spraying the champagne with abandon.<\/p>\n

The last Italian champion \u200bwas Alberto Ascari, 73 years earlier.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the last lap, I just backed off because I just couldn\u2019t see the track. I was getting emotional,\u201d Antonelli told a later news conference.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it was just good to bring it home.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a>Verstappen goes second overall<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Leclerc finished fourth, McLaren\u2019s outgoing champion Lando Norris was fifth and Antonelli\u2019s teammate George Russell only sixth in a race he had to win to have any chance of staying in contention.<\/p>\n

That also meant Verstappen went second in the overall standings, with Hamilton third and pre-season \u200bfavourite Russell plummeting to fourth and 130 points behind Antonelli.<\/p>\n

Mercedes have 630 points in the constructors standings to Ferrari\u2019s 504 and could clinch that title in Brazil next weekend.<\/p>\n

McLaren\u2019s Oscar Piastri was seventh at the flag but \u200bwas then handed a 10-second penalty for causing a collision and demoted to 15th.<\/p>\n

That initially moved Franco Colapinto to seventh and his Alpine teammate Pierre Gasly to ninth, but both later lost their points when they were handed 10-second penalties for \u200cgoing too fast \u2060under yellow flags.<\/p>\n

The post-race penalties moved Racing Bulls\u2019 Liam Lawson up to seventh, Audi\u2019s Gabriel Bortoleto to eighth, Red Bull\u2019s Isack Hadjar to ninth, and allowed Ryo Hirakawa to score a point in 10th on his Haas debut.<\/p>\n

The race was stopped, after a brief safety car deployment, on lap 46 of 71 after Valtteri Bottas suffered a high-speed front-left suspension failure down the straight with his Cadillac pitched uncontrollably into the barriers at turn one.<\/p>\n

Bottas received medical attention in the car but then walked to an ambulance, giving a thumbs up, as the rest of the field returned to the pits. He went to the medical centre and was released.<\/p>\n

Verstappen led from the restart, challenged \u200bby Hamilton with Antonelli passing Leclerc, and there was then \u200banother safety car when Lindblad and Piastri collided \u2013 \u2060with the field released to race again with nine laps to the chequered flag.<\/p>\n

The four-time champion, cleared of a false start, hung on to take his 74th career win \u2013 and sixth in Mexico \u2013 by 0.799 of a second with Antonelli four seconds down the road.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Ferrari pair collide<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Hamilton had led away from the original pole position, for the \u200b105th time in his career but first for Ferrari<\/a> at a full Grand Prix, with Leclerc slotting in behind from third on the grid.<\/p>\n

The Briton held him \u200boff as they went side by \u2060side through the opening corners but Leclerc cut turn four and went across the grass as they battled for the lead, with Verstappen then taking second from Hamilton as the Ferrari looped wide.<\/p>\n

\u201cPushed out by my own teammate,\u201d said Hamilton over the radio.<\/p>\n

Stewards handed Leclerc a five-second penalty but that did little for Hamilton, who remained behind his teammate after their respective stops on laps 28 and 29 with the Monegasque taking his penalty.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem with the five-second penalty is \u2060he\u2019s got clean \u200bair and doesn\u2019t have to manage like the rest of us. He should just give the positions back,\u201d said the seven-time world \u200bchampion.<\/p>\n

Stewards said neither car would have made the corner on track, given the speed they were going.<\/p>\n

Russell, who had lined up on the front row, made a poor start and dropped to fifth. The Briton also collided with Hadjar, with the Red Bull punted off, and the \u200bstewards handed him a 10-second penalty.<\/p>\n

Hadjar pitted for a change of tyres when a virtual safety car was deployed on lap seven after Lance Stroll stopped his Aston Martin on track.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A tearful Kimi Antonelli became Formula One\u2019s youngest world champion at 20 years and 68 days old on Sunday when he finished third for Mercedes in a red-flagged and restarted \u200bMexico City Grand Prix won by Red Bull\u2019s Max Verstappen. The first Italian champion since 1953 sobbed with joy over the team radio as he took the chequered flag at the high-altitude \u200cAutodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, with his overall lead now an unassailable 119 points. Ferrari\u2019s Lewis Hamilton started from pole position and took a close second place \u2013 after clashing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english"],"gutentor_comment":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3649\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}