Toto Wolff on Kimi Antonelli: From a deer caught in the headlights to an ‘AI agent’

At Monza, Kimi Antonelli thrilled not only the Italian fans with his comeback from 19th on the grid to victory at his home Grand Prix. With his seventh win of the year, the championship leader further extended his lead in the World Championship and now has a 66-point advantage over his team-mate George Russell. Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff was full of praise for Antonelli, who is just 20 years old, after the race.

Antonelli was in a league of his own at Monza

Before the race, Wolff already had a hunch, as the Austrian revealed afterwards: “I thought one of the two would win. Either George or Kimi, because he’d be flying here at Monza. I could sense that yesterday.”

Wolff: “We had to go for a one-stop strategy on the hard tyres. And we knew he’d fight his way through the field. Then the race was interrupted by the red flag, and suddenly he fell behind on the medium tyres. And that turned out to be the right strategy.” A blessing in disguise, then: Antonelli had started from 19th on the grid with an engine penalty and had fitted the hard tyres at the start. The early red flag following Leclerc’s crash on lap 3 didn’t really fit into Antonelli’s plan at all. But things turned out differently.

Wolff: “We didn’t know which strategy was better. At that point, the system indicated that the one-stop strategy would have the edge. The two-stop strategy would catch up towards the end, but wouldn’t quite be able to close the gap. That’s what the software said.”

Wolff: That was the decisive factor

According to Wolff, however, something else was the deciding factor: “The decisive factor was the ability to fight through the traffic. And we’ve seen that before with other greats like Lewis (Hamilton, ed.), who’s managed to do that in a few races. And that’s exactly what he showed today. There’s simply no stopping him now. When driver and car are one, nothing can hold them back.”

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Antonelli’s dad saw it coming too

Wolff’s press conference focused almost entirely on Antonelli, with hardly any mention of Russell. And Wolff really raved about his protégé and his development: “It’s been a while since I’ve seen a driver with this kind of energy, attitude, mentality or behaviour. And I knew that was his mission today: to win the race. And I spoke to his father yesterday. His father saw it coming too. These are the moments when, as the sessions unfold, you can sense how a weekend is developing and that a special moment might be on the cards. But it’s still a technical sport, so things can change quickly.”

After a somewhat bumpy debut year, Antonelli is now really hitting his stride. Wolff: “Last year went according to plan. I said there would be brilliant moments, but also more difficult ones. And I think that’s how he started the season – back then he was like a deer in the headlights. In the car, he was in the right frame of mind and was already putting in exceptional performances, but not consistently. And then he had that run of nine races without scoring any points. I remember that Spa was awful for him and he was really down. Monza was the point where I said to him for the first time: ‘Listen, you need to wake up.’ But I never doubted him. That’s why we gave him the chance.”

Antonelli, the AI agent

And then came 2026: “And then he came back after the winter break and got off to a start that nobody had expected. He felt the pressure from the media, the attention he was getting. In a way, the system processed and stored that. And that’s why we saw those results afterwards. But it’s still surprising and astonishing to see how quickly he’s developing. To me, he’s like an AI agent who’s constantly improving himself and learning. That’s the speed. And his age is certainly an advantage here too – the ability to keep getting better cognitively and intellectually.”