Kimi Antonelli is off to a scorching begin to the 2026 System 1 season, of that there is no such thing as a doubt.
The younger Mercedes driver stands atop the Drivers’ Championship standings with 100 factors, 20 factors away from teammate George Russell and one other 41 factors forward of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, who sits in third with 59 factors. In simply his second season, Antonelli started the yr with a P2 on the Australian Grand Prix, and adopted that together with his first three Grand Prix victories. After taking the Chinese language Grand Prix, Antonelli notched wins in each the Japanese Grand Prix in addition to the Miami Grand Prix final weekend.
With these three wins, Antonelli not solely joined some elite firm, however he made somewhat System 1 historical past of his personal.
Along with these three consecutive wins — the primary three of his profession — Antonelli was on pole place for every of these, together with his pole for the Chinese language Grand Prix the primary Grand Prix pole of his younger profession.
As identified by none apart from Will Buxton, who along with his duties broadcasting IndyCar with FOX Sports activities maintains an eye fixed on F1 by way of the Netflix docuseries Drive to Survivethat put Antonelli in elite firm. As Buxton famous, the primary drivers in F1 historical past to take their first three poles consecutively? Antonelli, Ayrton Senna, and Michael Schumacher.
The drivers in F1 historical past to take their first three wins in consecutive style? Damon Hill, Mika Häkkinen, and Antonelli.
Each different driver on that checklist gained a minimum of one F1 Drivers’ Championship. Senna gained titles in 1988, 1990 and 1991, Hill gained in 1996, Häkkinen gained titles in 1998 and 1999, and Schumacher nonetheless stands atop F1 historical past books (alongside Lewis Hamilton) together with his seven titles.
However the place the Mercedes driver units himself aside is changing these first three pole positions to wins.
As a result of, as Buxton famous, the checklist of drivers to consecutively win their first three F1 races from their first three pole positions accommodates only one identify.
Talking after Antonelli’s win in Miami, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff admitted that even he didn’t see this run of kind coming.
“Sure, completely. I usually mentioned it final yr: bringing an eighteen-year-old into the workforce would have given us moments of celebration and others the place we needed to tear our hair out over his errors,” mentioned Wolff.
“But it surely was a crucial course of to get him to know the workforce. Serving to him is the truth that it is a new era of vehicles and that every one the drivers are nonetheless studying. I anticipated a great begin, however I’ve to confess: three wins in a row was not one thing we had anticipated.”
Maybe as a result of it’s one thing F1 has not often seen.
