Kimi Antonelli world champion: twenty years old and a place in our Sundays

Kimi, twenty years old and a place in our Sunday

Antonelli world champion in Mexico. After seventy-three years, an Italian wins the Formula 1 title again. And we find ourselves looking at a boy before a record.

In the end, you want to let him breathe. Before the questions, the photographs, all the times he will have to explain what it feels like to become world champion at twenty. As if it were possible to know straight away. As if the heart had the same precision as the stopwatch.

Andrea Kimi Antonelli claimed the World Championship by finishing third in Mexico, behind Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton. He is the youngest champion in Formula 1 history. Huge news, contained in a line in the standings. Everything else will take time.

It will take a morning with no plans, perhaps. A wake-up with the phone finally far away. The moment when the celebration is over and those words are still there: world champion. Even without someone repeating them into a microphone.

For us, meanwhile, the work of memories has already begun.

The last Italian had been Alberto Ascari, in 1953. Seventy-three years: an interval so long that it spans families, changes televisions, wears out Sundays. Antonelli ended that wait with a Mercedes, at twenty years and sixty-eight days.

There will be fans today thinking of the person they used to watch the races with. Of an armchair left empty, of a phone call they wished they could make. Sport enters homes like this: we let it in for one race and it ends up keeping pieces of our lives safe. An overtake sticks to a lunch, a victory to a voice, a name to childhood.

Now there is his too.

Kimi. A short name, already easy to shout, which we will have to learn to say without turning it into a request every time. Because from this evening they will ask him for a great deal. Confirmation, more titles, an answer to every difficulty. Success shortens the patience of those watching: as soon as you receive something extraordinary, you start to consider it normal.

In Mexico, he spoke mainly about those who stood by him. His family, Mercedes and gratitude. He admitted the tension of the weekend and the difficulty of understanding what had just happened. There is something beautiful about this reaction: before describing himself as a solo achievement, he acknowledged the people who accompanied him.

It is a detail that deserves to remain, even when we have finished counting the records.

Verstappen and Hamilton were on the podium. For Antonelli, sharing the title celebration with them made the moment even more special. Formula 1 gave him a photograph that will be hard to improve on: the new champion alongside two men who defined the era in which he grew up.

From tomorrow, the analysis will come. The car, the tyres, the pit wall decisions, the points gained over the season. It will be right to understand how this World Championship was built. Talent too needs work, tools, trust; telling it only as destiny would be unfair to everyone who put their hands to it.

Tonight, though, we can allow ourselves a few minutes before the explanations.

Looking at that boy and remembering how difficult it is, at twenty, to even understand where you want to go. He has reached the top of his sport. He will still have to discover what it means to live there, how much space such happiness takes up, what to take with him and what to leave outside.

We can do one simple thing: celebrate him without already hurrying towards the next milestone.

For tonight, Kimi, you have done enough.

Enjoy it. There is a waking Italy keeping you company.