Kimi Antonelli wearing a white Mercedes number 12 cap at the 2026 Australian Grand Prix

Kimi Antonelli: The 19-Year-Old Leading the 2026 F1 Championship

August 06, 2026

Welcome to the Happy Hour Racing Formula 1 Driver Spotlight - where we pull one driver into the garage, look under the hood at their career, and tell you what makes them tick. This week: the number 12.

The Short Version

Andrea Kimi Antonelli is a 19-year-old Italian who drives the number 12 Mercedes, and right now he is winning the Formula 1 World Championship. He took over Lewis Hamilton's seat as a teenager in 2025, scored more points than any rookie in the history of the sport, and then came back in 2026 and won six of the first eleven races. He heads into the summer break with a 50-point lead over Hamilton. If you have not been paying attention to F1 this year, this is the reason to start.

From a Bologna Kart Track to the Mercedes Garage

Antonelli was born on August 25, 2006, in Bologna, Italy. Racing was already the family business. His father, Marco Antonelli, raced sportscars and runs his own team, AKM Motorsport, and his mother, Veronica Pomaro, has worked in motorsport since 1997. Kimi first sat in a kart at five years old and was competing by seven.

One thing that gets asked constantly: no, he is not named after Kimi Raikkonen. The middle name was suggested to his father by a family friend who wanted something that did not sound Italian, and the timing was pure coincidence.

Mercedes spotted him early and signed him to their junior program while he was still in karting. At 13 he became the youngest senior European karting champion in history. Then the car results started stacking up fast. In 2022 he won the Italian Formula 4 title as a rookie with 13 wins, plus the German ADAC F4 championship in the same year. In 2023 he won two different Formula Regional championships, becoming the first European driver to take multiple F3-level titles in a single season since Alain Prost did it in 1979.

In 2024 Mercedes skipped him past FIA Formula 3 entirely and put him straight into Formula 2 with Prema. He finished sixth with two wins in a car he had never driven at tracks he barely knew. It was not a runaway year, and that was the point. Toto Wolff wanted him thrown in the deep end before the biggest promotion of his life.

Replacing Lewis Hamilton at 18

When Hamilton left Mercedes for Ferrari, the team handed the seat to an 18-year-old. That is one of the heaviest jobs in motorsport, and Antonelli did not flinch. He made his debut at the 2025 Australian Grand Prix at 18 years and 203 days old, the third-youngest starter in F1 history, and finished fourth in the rain.

The rookie season was uneven, which everyone expected. There were four retirements and a stretch of anonymous weekends in the middle of the year. But there were also three podiums, a first one in Canada, a second place in Brazil, and a third in Las Vegas. In Japan he became the youngest driver ever to lead a lap and to set a fastest lap. He finished seventh in the standings with 150 points, which is the highest total any rookie has ever scored in Formula 1.

The 2026 Run

Then the new regulations landed and Mercedes built the best car on the grid. Antonelli grabbed it with both hands.

Kimi Antonelli standing on his Mercedes car celebrating his first Formula 1 win at the 2026 Chinese Grand Prix — Antonelli celebrates his maiden Formula 1 victory at the 2026 Chinese Grand Prix, the race where he also became the youngest polesitter in F1 history. (Photo: Liauzh, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

At round two in China he put the Mercedes on pole at 19 years and six months old, erasing Sebastian Vettel's record from 2008 by nearly two years. The next day he converted it into his first career win. He then won in Japan, Miami, Canada and Monaco. Five in a row, all of them his first five career victories.

Monaco was the one people will remember. He took pole, led every single lap, set the fastest lap and won the race, a Grand Slam in the strictest sense of the term, and he is the youngest driver ever to do it. He is also now the youngest winner in the history of the Monaco Grand Prix, taking a record Hamilton had held since 2008.

Kimi Antonelli.

The youngest winner in the history of the Monaco Grand Prix #F1 #MonacoGP
— Formula 1 (@F1) June 7, 2026

The streak ended in Barcelona with an engine failure, and Silverstone went sideways with a wheel shield problem and a track limits penalty that dropped him to 15th. He answered both times. He won from pole at Spa, then took a three-place grid penalty in Hungary, started seventh, and still climbed to third. That is the part that should worry the rest of the grid. The bad days are not costing him much.

By the Numbers

Here is the career so far. Every figure below is a Formula 1 total through the 2026 Hungarian Grand Prix.

Career figures are Formula 1 totals through the 2026 Hungarian Grand Prix. Original Happy Hour Racing graphic.

Off the Track

Antonelli still lives a fairly normal teenage life by F1 standards. He went to school at ITCS Gaetano Salvemini in Casalecchio di Reno outside Bologna, studying international relations and marketing, and he picked up English at race weekends and German after joining the Mercedes junior program.

He grew up idolizing Ayrton Senna, watching old race footage on DVD with his father, and he is a big Lionel Messi fan. His first taste of a real race car came at nine years old in a Lamborghini Super Trofeo, with his dad working the pedals from the passenger side. In 2023 he entered his first sportscar race in the Italian GT3 championship at Misano, driving a Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo for his father's team, and won it.

The Bottom Line

Twelve rounds remain in 2026, and a 19-year-old holds a 50-point cushion in the best car on the grid. Antonelli has already rewritten the youngest-ever pages of the F1 record book, and he does not turn 20 until the week of the Dutch Grand Prix. Whether the title comes this year or later, Formula 1 has its next great one, and everybody in the paddock knows it.