- Toto Wolff used the last minutes of the Mexico City post-race media session to declare that the “win at all costs” driver “has died”, per Motorsport.com.
- The Mercedes team principal named no drivers, but aimed his words at “the few entitled ones” and “the endless moaners on the radio” while holding up new champion Kimi Antonelli as the model.
- Wolff also told Antonelli on the eve of the race that the aim is to “stay relevant all life”, with 25 years still to go.
One More Word From the Man Who Backed the Kid
“This notion of win at all costs, selfish, opportunistic, ruthless for your own benefit, that model of racing driver has died.”
Toto Wolff said it at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez on Sunday, as the post-race media session in Mexico City was being brought to a close. The Mercedes team principal and CEO had asked to add one last point. “Let me say one more word now that I have you all here,” he began, and told the room he had talked it over with Mohammed Ben Sulayem, the FIA president.
What followed was a character reference for a 20-year-old. Antonelli had finished third in the race, which was enough to make him world champion with four races to spare and the youngest champion in the sport’s history. Wolff used the moment to describe the kind of person he thinks should win.
“We have a new champion that represents values like humility, like integrity, loyalty, respect, being himself,” Wolff said. He called Antonelli a role model for young drivers in the junior formulas, and then widened the target: “And should be a role model for the few entitled ones in Formula 1, the endless moaners on the radio, the ones that complain, the ones that crash.”
Wolff did not say who he meant.
A Message for the Whole Grid
Wolff pointed to Antonelli’s age and told the grid to take a lesson from it. He tied that standard to the sport’s leadership. “That is how the FIA, that Mohammed, that Stefano [Domenicali], that’s how I would want to see racing drivers in the future,” he said, naming Ben Sulayem and Domenicali, the Formula 1 CEO. “That is modern Formula 1.”
He then separated talent from character. Talent, in his view, is something every driver on the grid has. “You got to be a good person too,” he said, and he finished the point with this line: “He has demonstrated that you can beat everyone out there by being a good person.”
The evidence for the claim is on the results sheet. Antonelli has won nine races this season, collected 16 podiums and led the championship from round three at Suzuka in March. His first grand prix win came in China two weeks before that. He took a podium at all but three races, and two of those three misses were down to technical problems on the W17.
Wolff also offered a small example of the values from inside his own garage. Asked about George Russell, who finished sixth in Mexico after a 10-second penalty, he said: “It was a great show of sportsmanship to go and see Kimi.” He added that Russell was “distraught”. Wolff’s praise for the visit sat apart from his speech about entitlement, and he did not link the two.
The 18-Year-Old Nobody Else Wanted to Bet On
The speech makes more sense against the story of how Antonelli got the seat. Lewis Hamilton announced before the 2024 season that he was leaving Mercedes for Ferrari, and for months the media speculated about his successor. Hamilton has now won again with Ferrari, and the seat he left belongs to a champion. Max Verstappen was regarded as a hot candidate in the summer. Antonelli had not met the high expectations in Formula 2 that year, and the first of his two wins came in the 15th of 28 races.
Wolff says the decision was made the morning Hamilton came to see him. “When Lewis stood at my door that morning, everything was already clear to me,” he said in a television interview. “The moment he confirmed that he was going to Ferrari, I knew Kimi would be in the car.”
He took the news to his press chief, Bradley Lord, now the deputy team principal, and to technical director James Allison. “I told them: ‘Kimi is in the car.’ They just said: ‘What are you talking about?'” Wolff recalled. His answer was that the team had the data. Antonelli had confirmed it through his results in Formula 4 and Formula Regional.
Not everyone who watched shared the confidence. Wolff said two sponsors left the team over the decision, and that they asked him who this kid was supposed to be. “They asked me: ‘Kimi Antonelli, who is this kid supposed to be?'” He did not name the two. Others stayed and, in his words, “are now reaping the rewards.”
Wolff describes himself as a cautious gambler. “I only take calculated risks,” he said, and he places the doubts outside his own building. “The team always stood behind this decision.” Mercedes CEO Ola Kallenius, he said, stood behind it as well. “The doubts only came from outside,” Wolff said, listing “other teams, from other drivers who felt they themselves deserved a chance. And from the media.”
Nine Races Without Points
The doubters had material to work with in 2025. Antonelli arrived at 18, in the car Hamilton had driven, after a Formula 2 season that critics called disappointing. The critics split into two camps. One said he needed another year in Formula 2. The other, once he was in the car, said a Mercedes was too much pressure and asked why the team had not sent him to Williams for a few years, as Russell had been given at Williams.
Then came a run of nine races in a row without points. At Spa in the summer of 2025, Antonelli had one of the hardest weekends of his debut season, and Wolff says there were tears. The “I told you so” voices grew louder. Antonelli has spoken openly about how he feared his F1 career was over in that first year.
Wolff says he never wavered. “2025 was exactly the season I had expected,” he said in a television interview. He saw it as a project of at least two years, with the second needing to confirm what the team had seen. The proof came in March, when Antonelli won in China and then at Suzuka, and he has held the championship lead from that day on. Antonelli calls Suzuka the “first turning point” of his championship, the day he took the lead.
Antonelli’s own account of the season carries the same tone Wolff praised. “I’ve still got to remember that I’m very lucky to do what I love to do as a profession,” he said after the title. That is a humble line from a man who has just beaten the whole grid. Antonelli’s title win already carries the story of how Wolff’s gamble paid off; the press-room speech adds a view of what Wolff thinks it proved.
Twenty-Five Years of Staying Relevant
The part of the speech with the most personal edge came last. Wolff told the room what he had said to Antonelli the day before the race, after a conversation with Lapo Elkann about Elkann’s grandfather, the late Fiat boss Gianni Agnelli. “Lapo Elkann said to me about his granddad that he was able to stay relevant his whole life. And I think that’s a great thing to say,” Wolff said.
He turned that into a goal for his driver: “Together we have to try for you to stay relevant all life. You have 25 years to go.” He said he wants to look back across that stretch and say Antonelli never turned into a “one-time wonder”, and that the team had helped him “improve where he can improve”.
Then Wolff gave the warning. “There’s not many that stay relevant,” he said. Some world champions, he noted, are people “nobody’s taking a selfie of anymore.” Staying relevant, he told Antonelli, is “what I would want to achieve with you.”
Back to Work in São Paulo
Antonelli’s coronation did not end the season. The Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos runs from November 6 to 8, the first race after the title was settled, and there is still a constructors’ fight and a race win to chase. Wolff has asked the grid to look at a 20-year-old and think about how to improve, and the radio traffic in São Paulo will show who listened. Antonelli arrives there with the title in his pocket and, if Wolff has his way, 25 years of staying relevant ahead of him.
