Mercedes boss Toto Wolff refused to call Kimi Antonelli the Formula 1 world championship favourite despite increasing his points lead at the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Antonelli fought back from a grid penalty to take third place at the Hungaroring and coupled with Lewis Hamilton’s poor race and penalty that left him fifth, plus George Russell’s nightmare start and recovery drive to seventh, the Italian extend his lead in the championship to 50 points over Hamilton and 59 points over Russell.
Despite having two race wins’ worth of points over nearest rival Hamilton, Wolff feels with 11 races and two sprint races left in 2026 there is still a long way to go in the title chase.
“It's too early to say. I'm superstitious, even though the gap is 50 points, there's so many races to go, a DNF for two can just swing massively,” Wolff said when asked if he considered Antonelli as title favourite.
“We've not been great on reliability, so we just have to continue to maximise every single day from the Friday onwards to the Sunday and then hopefully at the end that will be enough.”
With Mercedes hit by unreliability over the first half of the season, Wolff is bracing for the team to need to take engine penalties at some stage over the rest of the campaign.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes
Photo by: Guido De Bortoli / LAT Images via Getty Images
F1 teams often target races where overtaking is easier to take engine penalties – for example, Lando Norris took his engine penalty at Spa-Francorchamps to avoid the pain at the Hungaroring or Zandvoort – to give their drivers a better chance at reducing the pain of the grid drop.
But when casting an eye on the upcoming races and where Mercedes could opt for an engine change to serve a grid drop with the least amount of pain, Wolff did highlight Antonelli’s home race at Monza as an option.
The Italian GP is the second race after the summer break, meaning Mercedes will have enough time to assess its current engine pool for both drivers and decide if it needs to opt for fresh power unit parts outside of its permitted allocation.
“In terms of engine penalties, I still very much hope we don't need to take it and we need to decide when that is, when we need to take one and which tracks,” Wolff said.
“There could be one that can be very special for Kimi, but on paper it looks like it's a good place to take an engine penalty, so we need to speak to Marco [Antonelli, Kimi’s father] whether we want to take an engine penalty in Monza.
“Baku is also one, maybe Baku. We take the pressure off [of Antonelli] in Monza to start from the back, it's just our reliability has been not good and whether we take a penalty or not, we shall see.”
Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes
Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images
Antonelli puts in champion’s drive
Wolff also agreed with the assessment that Antonelli put in a “champion’s performance” to fight back from seventh place on the grid to the podium, but did concede that without the penalty the 19-year-old could have finished a spot higher in the race.
“Absolutely,” Wolff said in response when asked if Antonelli put in a champion’s drive. “Lewis was the one to win this race Saturday morning and all of Friday. We come out of this with a few points gained, that's great. But I've been always a miserable guy with the glass half-empty. We could have had P2 today, or we should have had P2 and maybe in balance he got the penalty.
“So overall, maybe on Kimi’s side we need to go home and say that's okay in terms of the points.”
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