Here's Why Mercedes F1 Boss Wolff Wants to Keep a 'Handbrake' On the Hype Around Antonelli

“I think the easier bit is making sure that he keeps both feet on the ground here in the team,” Wolff said on Sunday night. “His parents have played a big part in that to leave him grounded. The bigger problem is the Italian public. Now that they are not qualified for football [since Italy failed to make the FIFA World Cup], it's all about Sinner and Antonelli. And Sinner won in Madrid. So it's the two superstars, and that is something which we need to contain. There's so many requests for his time, from the media, from sponsors—and it's on us to keep the handbrake on that.”

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What’s been impressive about Antonelli’s short F1 career is that it has been far from smooth sailing, yet he just grows stronger and stronger. He’s had some crashes—most infamously on his first flying lap in his first FP1 session in Monza in 2024, and then taking out Verstappen in Austria last year. He also had a lot of weekends in 2025 when he struggled to match Russell, with Wolff even calling his performance out as “underwhelming” at one point. But all the ups and downs have been part of the learning experience.

“You look throughout his trajectory, in karting and in the junior formulas, he was just outstanding,” said Wolff. “And it when you think about what we said last year—it's exactly how he's performing, how his development panned out. We had these great ups, the moments of brilliance, and then moments where he was allowed to make mistakes. We needed to calibrate and continue to mentor him, whilst having pressure on him. But he just takes it so well, and he's able to analyze it, but then don't overthink it. He compartmentalizes that. Okay, I made a mistake. I put it away.”

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He processed all of that over the winter and came back in 2026 stronger in every way, benefiting from the fact that he’s been to all the venues and learned the rhythm of race weekends and the season as a whole. “He's seen the Grands Prix, he's worked with the team,” said Wolff. “He knows the pressure that the media puts upon him. But nevertheless, we just really need to stay calm here—because such a success for such a young man at that stage [means] all of Italy will be on him.”

Wolff stressed the role of Antonelli’s parents, who were in the room in the Miami paddock as he spoke. “Marco is pretty good at keeping his son grounded, even when he's winning,” the Mercedes team boss said. “And I think all of us collectively that are close to him, we need to keep re-emphasizing and repeating the message: this is a long game. He has a killer of a teammate [who] is extremely fast. The others are catching up in performance.”

Wolff has his eyes on the future, and gave some indication of what could lie ahead. “We want to play the long game. He can hopefully win many championships over ten years, fifteen years, and we don't want to stumble now with these huge expectations that will sit on him."

"Because the moment he has a bad race, which will happen, or he makes a mistake, people will say, ‘Oh, maybe Kimi is not the superstar that we thought.’ And that's why, let's keep that trajectory. It's a share price that's going up [Wolff indicated an undulating path]. He's nineteen years old. I don't think I was able to take my own flight when I was nineteen and find my way to the terminal in the airport! So it's incredible what he's doing.”

Toto Wolff and Kimi Antonelli after a Formula 2 Sprint Race at Silverstone Circuit on July 6, 2024.NurPhoto - Getty Images

Antonelli’s progress has not gone unnoticed elsewhere. McLaren boss Andrea Stella, who worked with loads of big names at Ferrari and played a key role in bringing Lando Norris and Oscar through their rookie years. “I think we should really pay credit to the quality of the driving—the consistency, the speed in both a single lap and in the race, and overall execution,” he said when asked by Road & Track about his team’s main rival. “We should pay credit to what Kimi is showing, and is actually delivering on track. I would have said after testing that George was in a stronger position, which was the case until Australia. But for some reasons, things seem to have turned around.”

Stella also pays credit to the Mercedes team. “I think this is thanks to the good work that Kimi must be doing with his engineers and with the people around him. There's always a group of people around the driver, and success comes because this synergy works. And I think Kimi must be having all these conditions in place. Well done to Kimi. Well done to Mercedes as well.”

Can he keep his streak up in Montreal and beyond? It'll be fascinating to see.

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