Formula 1: with second place in Sepang the Italian from Mercedes increased his lead over teammate Russell to 84 points. In Austin on October 25th he can already make the Drivers’ World Championship his own: all combinations
Now the countdown can begin. With 88 points ahead of teammate George Russell, the world title for Kimi Antonelli is ever closer. As a popular TV advert said, “not dreams but solid realities”, like the one that emerged from the Bahrain Grand Prix in Sepang with the final twist that knocked out Russell who, with third place, would have ended up losing only three points to Kimi, ending up -66 and who instead found himself in an instant 88 points behind the world championship leader. The wheel turns on the side of the Bolognese phenomenon, but then there is the maturity of a boy who has already become a man and above all an expert driver. He even manages to curb his Kimi instinct, that of always pushing in any situation. But that wasn’t the case in Sepang, after Russell’s exit Kimi never thought of picking up Verstappen (assuming he would have succeeded). He controlled the race thinking about taking his Mercedes to the finish line and given that the reliability problems of the German car have manifested themselves several times this season, reaching the end and further increasing the advantage is the best that Antonelli could hope to achieve. Kimi is a very fast driver who always wants victory, but at twenty years old he has already understood something that many drivers only learn after ten years of racing: what matters is the final result and then all that remains is to do the math to understand when Italy will once again be able to celebrate a world champion driver, 72 years after Alberto Ascari.
Between Austin and Mexico
Considering the current advantage the first chance to settle the score could come as early as October 25th in Austin: to do this Kimi would have to win the next two grands prix in Singapore and the United States and also achieve triumph in the Sprint Race. An en plein which gives the current 84 point advantage it would take him to more than 126 and at that point he would be unattainable for Russell who could score a maximum of 125 points in the remaining five grands prix. More likely the title will arrive on Nov. 1 in Mexico, at which point the lead should be 101 points over the Briton, while if he were to postpone the appointment in Brazil again, he would only need 76 points of advantage, less than what he currently has. All numbers that can be contradicted by the unpredictability of Formula 1, as demonstrated by Russell’s stop at the end of the Sepang race. But the finish line is really close and Kimi knows it. Seven races are not a few, but the state of mind of the two Mercedes drivers after the Bahrain Grand Prix: Antonelli flies and every day becomes more convinced that the maximum finish line is approaching, while Russell has ended up in a tunnel from which he can no longer get out. Even if Toto Wolf, the great boss of Mercedes, continues to repeat that his team gives the same chances to both drivers, it is now clear that Kimi has earned the leadership of the German company through results. And the first to be happy about it is Wolf himself, who bet on Antonelli when he was little more than a child and was right.
