All the details, big and small, that explain the Kimi phenomenon

There are two sides to the same champion. On the one hand, there is Andrea, or Andy, the ordinary lad. On the other, there is Kimi, the driver who has rewritten history. Kimi’s World Championship is one of youth. But it is also one of family. In Formula 1, no one his age (20 years, 2 months, 7 days) had ever won the World Championship and, above all, no one had ever celebrated at the side of the track with mum, dad and his little sister. Kimi is the child champion who speaks like an adult. Kimi is the champion who still lives on his parents’ pocket money, even though he will soon be signing a contract worth around thirty million euros a season. Kimi is the sort of lad who washes his road-going Mercedes himself and enjoys drying it by hand. Kimi is the lad who taught Italians of a certain age what ‘letsgoski’ means – that gesture of celebration with the index finger and thumb that was once known mainly to surfers. We could have done without it, but for him, it’s all part of the package. He is also a young man who knows how to cry when necessary and does not hide his emotions. Last year, after yet another disappointment on the track at Spa, he broke down in tears because he feared he was not up to the task. This year he has cried only with joy, right up until the final lap in Mexico City: “I had so many tears in my eyes that I could hardly see the track.”

“Kimi is the champion next door,” suggests Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, a man who knows a thing or two about drivers (and victories). “He’s straightforward, calm and cheerful, as well as incredibly fast. He’s lucky to have a family by his side who, like Sinner’s, don’t want to be in the limelight and help him keep his feet on the ground. That’s why I believe we’ll see him win many more times and then, perhaps, one day he’ll even join Ferrari.” On the other hand, for someone born in Bologna who used to play with a little red car as a child, as Enzo Ferrari always thought and said, Maranello can only be his destined destination. We just mustn’t rush things too much. “One of Kimi’s strengths,” Montezemolo continues, “was being able to make mistakes without too much pressure last season. I’m thinking of Lauda, but also Schumacher, and then Hamilton and Verstappen. They all made mistakes in their first season. Kimi was able to do so without excessive pressure, driving a Mercedes that wasn’t, however, expected to win. He had the strength to learn from his mistakes, and the team did a brilliant job of protecting him.” His great stroke of luck was that ‘no’ from Ferrari when he was 11 or 12 years old.

“Ferrari didn’t have the structure to develop such a young driver,” Maurizio Arrivabene, who was team principal at the time, has often explained. And besides, if he’d gone to Ferrari, he would never have made it into the first team so quickly. Consider Ollie Bearman, who is still gaining experience at Haas, at the risk of becoming too old. It is the same path that Massa was made to follow in Montezemolo’s day, when he was sent to learn the ropes at Sauber. “Just imagine what you would have said and written if a 19-year-old had made his debut in a Ferrari only to crash into the wall at the Parabolica on the third lap of his career. An Italian, a youngster, would have faced too much pressure driving a Ferrari straight away – we have to admit that,” asserts Montezemolo, who knows how these things work. He himself had had to defend the decision to sign Schumacher when Michael, before he started winning, skidded into a guardrail at Monte Carlo. The pressure on those who wear red is greater than anywhere else. Lewis Hamilton recognised this even before his relationship with his team-mate deteriorated. Antonelli, however, is also the sort of driver who, when he makes a mistake, is unlikely to repeat it. At the start of the season he got off to a bad start – often a very bad one – slipping from pole position down to fourth place. Now he does not make mistakes anymore. Until a few races ago, he seemed to have an aversion to the track limits, frequently overshooting them and picking up penalties. Today he has learnt exactly where to place his tyres.

“If we look at recent years, I think Kimi is a lot like Max Verstappen. He, too, arrived in Formula 1 and immediately showed he had something special to offer. Kimi is one of those talents who come along once every twenty years. He’s something truly special. I’m even struggling to find the right adjective to describe him,” said Mario Andretti, known as ‘Piedone’, the last Italian-speaking world champion in history (in 1978). An American by passport, but Italian at heart. Kimi has quickly earned the respect of the champions racing alongside him – the very ones from whom he was asking for autographs at Monza just a few years ago. Seeing him celebrate the World Championship on the shoulders of Hamilton and Verstappen was the perfect full circle moment; eleven world titles have accompanied him to glory. He added his own to the tally, bringing the total to 12 world titles in a photograph that will now become a poster in his new home in San Marino. With that number 12 – the same as Senna’s – which has been with him ever since he started racing in single-seaters and which he has no intention of giving up, even now that he could wear the number one of the world champion. “I’m keeping the number 12 because it’s a way of keeping my feet on the ground, of staying focused on next year,” he explained, giving us another example of how he thinks, of how he’s here to stay. “This is just the beginning,” he repeats with the smile that will never leave him. “One thing I’ve been taught is to always try to remain true to ourselves. It doesn’t matter how successful you are, where you are, or where you’re racing. It’s important to always keep your feet on the ground and enjoy every moment.” A lesson that comes from his family. “Kimi must have raced about eighty karting races with me,” says Dino Chiesa, the man who has mentored other great champions such as Hamilton and Rosberg, “but his father only came to watch him about ten times. He was busy with his team and would have his mum take him along. But Marco wasn’t your typical Italian dad. He knows about racing, but he always left it to me; he always trusted me.” A father who was a racing driver himself, but didn’t interfere. A mother who, first and foremost, insisted her son study and get his school-leaving certificate. “We’re not a picture-perfect family,” say Veronica and Marco. But they’re certainly something very close to that in a country where parents are glued to the fences of stadiums, sports halls or go-kart tracks. “Kimi’s great strength is his ability to adapt to the car he’s driving and immediately find its limits. After just a minute, he’s already worked out how far he can push it. And even when it happened – because it did happen – that his team-mate was faster, he didn’t complain about the tyres, the engine or anything else. He just wanted to understand where he’d gone wrong and where he could improve,” adds Dino Chiesa, revealing another aspect of his character. Kimi doesn’t look for excuses. “At twelve, Kimi was already thinking like a twenty-year-old,” adds Gian Carlo Minardi, who was the first to discuss him with Toto Wolff, “but a stopwatch isn’t enough to tell if a lad has something special. You have to see how he behaves in the pit lane, how he reacts to difficulties…”. All these small and large clues help to explain the Antonelli phenomenon and how he manages to push the pain caused by Ferrari into the background. Everyone likes Kimi, and even the Scuderia’s fans have realised that, thanks to him, they can experience the kind of satisfaction the team hasn’t provided for almost twenty years. The future belongs to him, and who knows – perhaps one day it might merge with that of the Prancing Horse. What better opportunity to start thinking about the post-Hamilton era with the lad – or rather, the man – who has already taken Lewis’s place at Mercedes?

The only question that remains unanswered is: where can he still improve? It’s hard to say for a driver who is almost perfect. Some say he should learn to be a bit more aggressive in close-quarters battles. Others wonder how he’ll react when he finds himself battling wheel-to-wheel with Max Verstappen. He’s already given us a few glimpses of this. Just think of how he secured his podium finish in Mexico City, with a fierce and unhesitating overtake on Charles Leclerc – who, it’s true, was struggling with his tyres, but whom not even a now former world champion like Norris managed to get past. In short, Kimi isn’t exactly a soft touch. Anyone who followed him in the junior formulae can confirm that when it comes to taking risks and attacking, he doesn’t hold back. We are probably truly in the presence of a phenomenon destined to stand the test of time. He has already united Italy’s Ferrari fans, rejuvenated the Formula 1 audience and attracted the praise of champions from every sport – even politicians, who are always quick to jump on the bandwagon. Kimi, of course, never knew Ascari, his predecessor in the hall of fame. He never saw Senna race. He wasn’t even born when Michael Schumacher won his last title with Ferrari. There is now a famous video in which, whilst still a child, he asks Hamilton for an autograph. And yet he has slotted into their legacy with disarming ease. As if he had always been destined to take his place at their table. He is the one who was truly destined for greatness.