Antonelli washes his own car by hand as F1 title shot looms in Austin

Kimi Antonelli heads into the United States Grand Prix at Circuit of the Americas as the overwhelming favourite to clinch the 2026 Formula 1 drivers’ championship, holding a 102-point advantage over Mercedes team-mate George Russell with the penultimate triple-header of the season under way in Austin, Texas.

Victory — or the right combination of results — would make the 20-year-old the youngest world champion in F1 history and the first Italian to hold the title since Alberto Ascari lifted it in 1953, a gap of more than seven decades.

Ahead of the weekend, Antonelli offered an unusually grounded glimpse into his life away from the cockpit during the launch event for Mercedes’ United States Grand Prix livery. Asked how he fills his downtime, the Bologna-born driver revealed a hands-on relationship with his Mercedes-AMG GT63 road car.

“I like to clean my car,” Antonelli said. “I never do automatic, you know, with the machine. I always like to wash by hand, myself. Because I love cars, I really like to take care of my car and everything. I like to see it clean, so it’s an activity I love to do. It’s a routine.”

The title opportunity arrives at a moment when Mercedes are looking to bounce back after a difficult run of results. Team principal Toto Wolff acknowledged the team had struggled in Malaysia and Singapore and is treating Austin as a chance to reset.

“Malaysia and Singapore were difficult weekends for us and we have worked hard to understand where we fell short,” Wolff said in the team’s race preview. “Austin gives us an opportunity to respond. We will run our latest update package on both cars as we continue to develop the car. The field is incredibly close, so we need to keep moving forward if we want to fight consistently at the front in the closing stages of the season.”

Wolff was careful not to let the championship arithmetic overshadow the immediate task. “There is plenty at stake, but we won’t get ahead of ourselves,” he added. “The priority is the weekend in front of us: execute well, maximise our performance and take each race as it comes.”

For Antonelli, the stakes could hardly be higher — yet if his pre-race routine is anything to go by, the pressure does not appear to have changed much about how he lives.