Wolff believes Antonelli ‘absolutely’ World Champion material

Toto Wolf believes that Kimi Antonelli will show the “real Kimi” in 2026, with the Mercedes boss feeling confident that the rookie will be better prepared to deal with various aspects of the sport during his sophomore campaign.

It was confirmed ahead of the United States Grand Prix in October that Antonelli and team mate George Russell will remain as the Silver Arrows’ line-up into 2026, a season in which a wave of new technical regulations will be introduced into the sport.

Antonelli’s rookie year in F1 has witnessed various highs and lows, with a good start followed by a tricky spell during the European leg of the season. The Italian has since enjoyed a stronger run of form since finishing fourth in Baku, having also claimed a P5 in Singapore and a P6 in Mexico.

Looking ahead to 2026, Wolff feels that the 19-year-old will take another step forwards.

“Kimi has a long-term future,” the Team Principal explained after Antonelli’s place at the team for next season was confirmed. “I think it’s very tricky to come into this generation of cars without having driven them against all of the guys that know ground effect cars.

“Next year’s a reset. He now knows all the tracks, he knows about the media pressure and how to work within the team, so we’re going to see the real Kimi next year.”

Asked if he has confidence that Antonelli can be a future World Champion from what he has shown already, Wolff responded: “Yeah, absolutely.”

While Antonelli has faced some highs and lows in 2025, Mercedes have also seen dramatic performance swings with their car across different tracks.

Pushed on whether this is also an area that the squad need to get on top of ahead of 2026, Wolff answered: “It’s so difficult to find correlation between the simulator and the wind tunnel, then you come to a track and it’s all different.

“We didn’t expect to be that competitive in Singapore [where Russell won], but we have been... It’s a bit of a surprise box with the regulations, and all the front-running teams seem to suffer from correlation issues.”