Toto Wolff believes it is important not to compare Kimi Antonelli to Ayrton Senna or other legendary drivers, despite his “extraordinary results” in 2026.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
From the nine races held thus far, Antonelli has won five of them and also claimed the British GP Sprint victory to hold a commanding points lead in the drivers’ championship, which was as high as 66 points following the Monaco GP.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
That has been whittled down to 25 points following the British GP after car failures dropped Antonelli out of second in Barcelona, and then from a likely win at Silverstone as he hunted down Charles Leclerc in the closing stages before a wheel shield failure.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
In his rookie season, Antonelli initially struggled before rallying in the latter half of the season, including a stand-out second place in Sao Paulo, before coming into the 2026 season and holding the upper hand over team-mate George Russell.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Addressing the Italian’s ongoing maturity, Wolff spoke how it was still important not to compare Antonelli to F1 legends such as Senna.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“We knew he needed a year of settling in and growth because Formula 1 is a completely different world than the junior series,” Wolff told Gazetta della Sport.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“He had to adapt to F1 and learn to manage commitments with sponsors and the media.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“The goal has always been to improve in the second season, and he did it, driving at a very high level and obtaining extraordinary results.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“Right now, he is exceeding our most rosy expectations, but he must not feel satisfied.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“Everyone is exalting him. I always ask to keep the balance. We can’t compare him to Ayrton Senna, who has won three titles and is one of the most iconic drivers ever.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“Kimi has won five races, let him grow.”\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Toto Wolff believes it is important not to compare Kimi Antonelli to Ayrton Senna or other legendary drivers,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":799780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":["post-799779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=799779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/799780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}