{"id":450925,"date":"2026-02-03T10:00:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T10:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/450925\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T10:00:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T10:00:08","slug":"kimi-antonelli-outlines-bullish-2026-goals-ahead-of-second-f1-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/450925\/","title":{"rendered":"Kimi Antonelli outlines bullish 2026 goals ahead of second F1 season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Kimi Antonelli has targeted winning the 2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsportweek.com\/series\/single-seater\/formula-1\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Formula 1<\/a> championship following Mercedes\u2019 strong Barcelona pre-season shakedown test.<\/p>\n<p>Following an solid rookie 2025 season, Antonelli is now preparing for his second season in F1, as Mercedes aim to take advantage of a strong shakedown in Barcelona.<\/p>\n<p>The Silver Arrows led the way in terms of mileage under the Spanish sun, clocking an impressive 1,134 laps across its three days of testing.<\/p>\n<p>Should this pace continue at the first official pre-season test in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.formula1.com\/en\/racing\/2026\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Bahrain,<\/a> Mercedes look set to be the team to beat when the season kicks off in Australia.<\/p>\n<p>Despite his inexperience, Antonelli is hopeful of managing a serious title bid in 2026, bullishly outlining his goals. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s absolutely the goal,\u201d said Antonelli to media about his aims for 2026, including Motorsport Week at the launch of the W17 on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe goal is to win and to eventually fight for the world championship. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo, that\u2019s my goal and the goal is to win and to be one of the best. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo definitely, that\u2019s what I want and of course, George [Russell] is very, very strong and definitely is ready to fight for a championship and is one of the benchmarks on the grid. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think it\u2019s going to be quite fun, especially competing with him and so, yeah, really looking forward to it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Toto-Wolff-George-Russell-Kimi-Antonelli-1024x576.webp.webp\" alt=\"Kimi Antonelli is entering his second year with Mercedes \" class=\"wp-image-237148\"  \/>Kimi Antonelli is entering his second year with Mercedes <\/p>\n<p>Toto Wolff cautious of Kimi Antonelli title challenge<\/p>\n<p>Team Principal Toto Wolff has urged caution on a title challenge from the young Italian, citing Antonelli\u2019s mid-season slump, and lowering expectations. <\/p>\n<p>The Mercedes boss said: \u201cKimi, he\u2019s completely on the trajectory that we\u2019ve always mapped out at the beginning, last year \u2013 first year in Formula 1 with this huge circus coming upon him, the obligations with the media, the requests from sponsors and fan fandom and that\u2019s exactly why we had very good performances and then some races where he struggled more.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo now there\u2019s no doubt about his speed and about his race craft.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe\u2019s going into his second season, he knows all the tracks, he knows all of you guys, he knows most of the other requirements. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo I\u2019m absolutely certain that it will be a good year for him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHaving said that, I don\u2019t think we should expect him to be on top, to be like George all the time.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGeorge is one of the best ones, he\u2019s been in Formula 1 a long time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-vivid-red-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-408614ce9de6f0071171cc198125ba77\">READ MORE \u2013 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsportweek.com\/2026\/02\/02\/kimi-antonelli-identifies-2026-f1-simulator-anomaly-after-real-life-shakedown\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Kimi Antonelli identifies 2026 F1 simulator anomaly after \u2018real life\u2019 shakedown<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kimi Antonelli has targeted winning the 2026 Formula 1 championship following Mercedes\u2019 strong Barcelona pre-season shakedown test. Following&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":450926,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,25251,1881,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-450925","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula1","13":"tag-kimi-antonelli","14":"tag-mercedes","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/450926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}