🇮🇹 Andrea Kimi Antonelli

Andrea Kimi Antonelli races at a generational level, ranked sixth among active drivers on this scale, and drives for Mercedes in Formula 1, a single-class, solo-driver world championship run across dozens of countries against a field that mixes amateur and semi-professional entrants with graded professionals. He also holds Platinum FIA categorisation, the sport's top grade for GT and endurance racing.[1]

Antonelli came up through Prema Racing, winning the 2022 Italian F4 and 2022 ADAC Formula 4 titles in the same season before taking the 2023 Formula Regional European Championship, also with Prema. He moved into Formula 2 with the team in 2024, then joined Mercedes in Formula 1 for 2025, and won the 2026 Formula 1 championship in his second season with the team.[2]

His most frequent rivals are Oliver Bearman and Gabriel Bortoleto, both elite-professional, Platinum-graded drivers; Bearman has won the 2021 Italian F4, 2021 ADAC Formula 4 and 2022 Formula 3 titles, Bortoleto the 2023 Formula 3 and 2024 Formula 2 titles, and Antonelli runs closely matched with both across their shared starts. Among the strongest drivers he has beaten are George Russell, a generational champion of the 2018 Formula 2 title among others, and Lando Norris, the reigning 2025 Formula 1 champion, each finished ahead of on multiple occasions. His single Formula 1 season so far has not been without setbacks, including a qualifying crash at the 2026 Azerbaijan Grand Prix that he described afterward as one of his worst weekends of the year.