Kimi Antonelli Pulled Off A Miracle At Monza

Do you believe that Formula 1 can be romantic? Before immediately answering to the negative, at least consider Kimi Antonelli. He is freshly 20 years old, and just became the first Italian driver to win the Italian Grand Prix since Ludovico Scarfiotti did so in 1966. If your answer is still negative, and fair enough, at least consider that Antonelli achieved his victory by breaking the record for most overtakes during a Grand Prix in F1 history and after starting from P19 on the grid. Consider, too, that this is Monza we’re talking about. If the answer is still negative, well. Have you ever considered becoming Italian and seeing how that changes your perspective on the matter?

Before getting to Sunday, we must first go through Saturday, a fact that is true of the passage of time more generally and F1 race weekends specifically. Antonelli was a non-factor on Saturday by choice; with either the broader Drivers Championship picture in mind or the kind of confidence only accessible to people who just turned 20, he chose to tank an engine penalty in his overtake-happy home race. As a result, Antonelli spent most of qualifying on tractor duty and giving his Mercedes teammate, George Russell, a tow by providing a consistent slipstream.

The final qualifying shootout came between Russell, overwhelming race favorite, and Pierre Gasly in an Alpine. Gasly is one of the more successful of his cohort of Max Verstappen’s second drivers that Red Bull has ruined, which means that he has showed enough pace to stick around in F1, but not enough to emerge as a serious contender. Last year, Alpine was the worst team on the grid. This year, though the team remains haunted by Flavio Briatore’s presence, they have a more respectable place on the midfield. There was nothing in that rise to competence that would suggest how well they performed during qualifying this weekend. In Gasly’s specific case, his performance was a minor miracle. Through careful timing of his final lap and not setting a tire wrong, Gasly squeezed out the 0.060 seconds necessary to take pole position—the first of his career—away from Russell.

In any other race, with any other result, Gasly’s Saturday magic could still be the biggest story out of the weekend. Six years ago, after an ugly demotion from the primary Red Bull team, Gasly got his first-ever victory at Monza in an AlphaTauri; his first-ever pole felt like an apt, feel-good continuation of that story, even if he only held onto the lead for about a lap. It’s hard to extract a more romantic story, even from the narratively rich Monza. But then: Kimi Antonelli.

It’s the Italianness of it all. I mean that without irony or judgment. Another driver could have done what Antonelli did at another race track, and it would not feel the same because it was not an Italian doing it in Italy. Antonelli’s comeback win only felt like that because Italians and the tifosi love Formula 1 in the way that they do, and because they show that intensity in Monza; it is inspiring, in a way, that people can make things matter so much simply through pure belief and terrifying fervor.

Thanks to Antonelli’s rapid ascension this year, Italians had two rooting interests on Sunday: Ferrari and Antonelli. The Ferraris got off to a good start to open the weekend—here’s Lewis Hamilton looking stunning next to his newly acquired F40—and got off to almost immediate disaster to open the race. Hamilton and his teammate Charles Leclerc battled each other early, which ended with Hamilton pushed off the track and down several places; a few laps later, in a classic home heartbreaker, Leclerc had a massive high-speed crash into the tire barrier that resulted in a red flag. With Ferrari strategy eliminating the last dregs of hope for a Hamilton victory, the home crowd was left only with Antonelli to support. And, again, he was starting 19th on the grid.

It is absurd how quickly Antonelli gave them something to root for, even factoring in the fortune of a full race restart, the Mercedes rocketship, and Monza’s overtake-happy conditions. By the time of the restart, four laps in, Antonelli had gained seven places, sitting in P12. Three laps after the restart, he was in P6. Six laps after that, and Antonelli was sitting in P3, behind a teammate who was on a totally different strategy. On lap 18 of 53, Antonelli passed Russell for the provisional race lead, and before team orders eventually ruined the fun, the teammates had several laps of stressful wheel-to-wheel racing that peaked in an extraordinary lap 22 that must be watched to be fully appreciated.

The second stage of Antonelli’s victory began on lap 28, after Lance Stroll’s Aston Martin stopped on track, resulting in a virtual safety car. The Mercedes cars split strategy, with Antonelli pitting for fresh mediums and Russell—who is almost always down to try to stretch out a tire stint—staying on his old hard tires. If Antonelli could catch Russell, he would almost certainly have the win in hand; he had 24 racing laps to make up the difference.

That Antonelli’s objectively uncertain victory from that point could be viewed, in retrospect, as a foregone conclusion speaks to Antonelli’s consistency this year. He once again sped past the rest of the field—aided a bit by an error by Hamilton—until he had 16 laps in which to make up approximately 9 seconds to Russell. In other words, it was almost too easy. Even a scary moment in the gravel on his first overtake attempt with just four laps to go couldn’t prevent the inevitable. One lap later, Antonelli showed a bit more patience, whipped by Russell, and pulled forward by over a second in the span of just two corners. Lesser drivers with that much pressure on them might have experienced disaster in the closing laps, but Antonelli cinched his own victory with flair. Just for good measure, his fastest lap of the race came on his last one.

It is the sort of victory that will be remembered forever, and achieve legendary status should Antonelli—now with a 66-point lead and as many career race wins as his teammate—win this championship. Unlike Leclerc’s similarly romantic victory two years ago, when his race engineer Bryan Bozzi, declared, “Ma come ci fai sognare, come ci fai sognare”—”how you make us dream,” roughly—Antonelli and his race engineer, Pete Bonnington, let commentator Alex Jacques handle the poesy. “Here,” Jacques said, “is the man who turned scarlet hats silver.”

Antonelli and Bonnington themselves favored a dialogue that was a fair bit rawer. “Forza, Kimi! Forza, Kimi! Forza, Kimi!” Bonnington declared, again and again. Antonelli yelled back, “Yes! Yes! Oh my God!” And then, for lack of any better words to encapsulate what just happened: “Whoo! Whoo! Whoo!” That just about covers it.