Wolff urges patience with Antonelli after Senna comparisons follow maiden world title

Kimi Antonelli claimed the Formula 1 world championship at the Mexican Grand Prix this season, but Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff is determined to keep the inevitable Ayrton Senna comparisons in check — even as the Senna family itself begins to make them.

Antonelli, 20, won five consecutive grands prix earlier in the season, a feat only nine drivers in the sport’s history have achieved — and one Senna never managed. His fifth straight victory came via a commanding grand chelem at Monaco, the circuit most associated with Senna’s genius, where the three-time champion remains the record holder for pole positions and race wins. The parallels, aided in no small part by Antonelli’s curly brown hair, have been hard for the Italian press to resist.

“We keep emphasising to our friends from the Italian press, please don’t draw any comparison with Ayrton Senna or ‘Il Fenomeno’,” Wolff said at Barcelona in the week following that Monaco win. “He’s won five races in a row, which is unbelievable for a young man, but we haven’t won a championship, and he’s 19.”

After Antonelli did secure the title, he visited the Senna family ahead of the São Paulo Grand Prix and raced at Interlagos wearing a yellow helmet in tribute to the Paulista. The gesture appeared to move even Wolff, who had long resisted the comparison.

“Senna is a giant of the sport — who he was as a person, who he was as a racing driver,” Wolff said after the Brazilian GP. “Setting these standards for a 20-year-old driver is a lot of pressure, and that’s why I want to not compare him at that stage. He’s Kimi, Senna was Senna.”

Yet Wolff acknowledged a shift after hearing the Senna family’s own verdict. “They say that it’s the first time that it looks like there is a second Senninha. That is the first time that you can say, ‘OK, he’s a little bit like him’. But maybe at that stage he’s a Senninha and not a Senna yet. So let the Senninha develop, let him become a Senna.”

The context around Wolff’s own legacy was not lost either. Mercedes’ ninth constructors’ title this season drew him level with Frank Williams’ tally as a team principal, and his combined haul of 17 drivers’ and constructors’ championships now matches Ron Dennis’s record with McLaren — two names he himself invoked when describing Senna’s stature in the sport.