Wolff reveals Antonelli's nine-race pointless streak would have ended his career at any other F1 team

Toto Wolff has revealed that Kimi Antonelli’s nine-race pointless streak during his 2025 debut season would have seen the teenager dropped by almost any other Formula 1 team, making Mercedes’ decision to shield the young Italian one of the most consequential calls in recent championship history.

Speaking to media following Free Practice 3 at the Brazilian Grand Prix, Wolff reflected on how close his newly crowned world champion came to an early exit from the sport’s top tier. Antonelli had already secured the 2026 drivers’ title in Mexico City before Wolff chose to publicly acknowledge the depth of the crisis the team had quietly managed.

“What I’m particularly proud of is that I don’t think he would have lasted in other teams after an F2 season, which wasn’t overwhelming,” Wolff said. “And this spell of nine races without any points last year.”

The admission underlines the scale of the gamble Mercedes took when they handed Antonelli the seat vacated by Lewis Hamilton. Replacing a seven-time world champion with an unproven teenager was already a high-stakes decision; sustaining that commitment through a prolonged run of blank scoreboards required a level of institutional patience that Wolff acknowledges is rare in Formula 1.

Rather than reacting to external pressure, the Brackley outfit turned to their own data. “We just trusted our data, trusted our feeling about the personality and the potential,” Wolff explained. “Because there’s so many that came out and said, what a talent. And that wasn’t the journey.”

Instead, Wolff described a deliberate process of insulating the then-19-year-old from the weight of expectation that comes with driving for one of the sport’s most scrutinised teams. “The journey was developing the talent, nurturing, mentoring, shielding him, protecting him,” he said. “And eventually, you know, he in the car is just delivered absolutely amazingly.”

Antonelli’s title in Mexico serves as the ultimate validation of that approach. By Wolff’s own account, the championship was not simply won on track — it was preserved in the months before, when Mercedes chose to give a struggling rookie the time that Formula 1 almost never affords.