Kimi Antonelli\u2019s stunning rise to the top of Formula 1 has continued with back-to-back pole positions in Shanghai and Suzuka – but not everyone is ready to credit the young Italian alone.<\/p>\n
The 19-year-old Mercedes driver is now the youngest championship leader in the sport\u2019s history, sitting 9 points clear of experienced teammate George Russell after the opening phase of the 2026 season.<\/p>\n
Former F1 driver Mika Salo says Antonelli\u2019s performances have been impressive – but also reflects the current pecking order.<\/p>\n
“Suzuka was another strong performance from him,” he told Ilta Sanomat.<\/p>\n
“Of course, Mercedes is an absolutely dominant car at the moment, so in practice it goes like this – if Russell doesn\u2019t win, Antonelli wins. That\u2019s how it was at least for the first part of this season.”<\/p>\n
Salo also pointed to Antonelli\u2019s long-standing integration within the Mercedes system as a key factor.<\/p>\n
“It also matters a lot that he has been at Mercedes for a long time. He knows the organisation and knows how to utilise its resources,” he said.<\/p>\n
“On the other hand, Mercedes has been able to mould him into the kind of driver they want.”<\/p>\n
Even so, Salo expects Russell\u2019s experience to become more relevant as the season unfolds.<\/p>\n
“I think that over the course of the season, Russell\u2019s experience will start to show,” he added.<\/p>\n
“But it\u2019s hard to judge. In recent seasons, he has consistently driven top performances in a car that hasn\u2019t been among the fastest in the pits.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kimi Antonelli\u2019s stunning rise to the top of Formula 1 has continued with back-to-back pole positions in Shanghai…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585810,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-585809","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-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585809","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=585809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}