Kimi Antonelli has done it again: the 19-year-old Italian driver won the Monaco Grand Prix, becoming the race's youngest winner and extending his championship lead to 66 points over Lewis Hamilton. His rivals are trying to remain upbeat, which is a polite way of saying they're staring at the timing screens with quiet horror.
Pole position in Monaco is basically the whole ballgame, and Antonelli delivered with a qualifying lap that left his Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff - a man who has seen a lot of fast laps and is not easily impressed - genuinely gobsmacked. “Out of nowhere, the last two corners he made the difference,” Wolff said, presumably while clutching a stopwatch and muttering about the youth of today.
Antonelli beat four-time champion Max Verstappen into second by four-hundredths of a second and seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton into third by two-tenths. Both drivers are not exactly novices around Monte Carlo. Both were soundly beaten by a teenager who, until very recently, was probably still figuring out how to parallel park.
In the race, Antonelli held his lead from start to finish, managing two restarts - one rolling, one standing - with the kind of cold clinical precision that Verstappen and Hamilton would recognize only too well, because they invented it. He now leads the championship by 66 points over Hamilton, with George Russell a further two points back. It's not a small lead, even with 16 races remaining.
Antonelli has five wins from six races this season, which is the sort of dominance that makes other drivers start checking their contracts. His adaptation to the new cars and regulations has been, to put it mildly, swift. “I matured a lot,” he said, which is what you say when you're 19 and winning everything in sight. “Despite how bad the bad moments were, being able to come away and to reset… that made me grow.”
He is also, it must be said, enormously endearing - still an enthusiastic kid whose eyes shine with joy even when doing the required media rounds. He shares that trait with a young Lewis Hamilton, a comparison that will only become more frequent as the season - and indeed his career - progresses.
Meanwhile, teammate George Russell finished 13th after penalties, which is the kind of result that makes you wonder if someone put a hex on your gearbox. Wolff defended him: “You don't unlearn how to drive, and you don't become a miracle wonder driver.” No, but apparently you can become one when you're 19 and Italian.
Next up: the Spanish Grand Prix at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, where the post-upgrade pecking order will be made clear. If anyone is going to rein in Antonelli, they should probably start making their case now.