- Antonelli leads the championship. Hamilton and Verstappen step back.
- Both veterans offered open guidance during his rocky rookie season.
- The closed door, it turns out, is the paddock’s way of saying he has arrived.
There is a particular moment in every young driver’s career when rivals stop offering advice and start watching their back. For Andrea Kimi Antonelli, that moment appears to have arrived.
The 19-year-old Mercedes driver has revealed that both Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen have pulled back the open, mentoring approach they offered him throughout his rookie season in 2025.
Antonelli made the admission in an interview with German outlet BILD, and the timing tells its own story. The Italian sits at the top of the 2026 Formula 1 drivers’ standings after three rounds, nine points clear of Mercedes teammate George Russell, with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc a further 14 points back in third.
When a driver goes from promising newcomer to genuine title threat in the space of a single winter, the paddock adjusts accordingly.
What Antonelli actually said
While Antonelli didn’t speak at length about how he is now being treated differently, his words do paint a bigger picture.
“Last year, they were very open and helped me,” Antonelli told BILD. “But now they have stopped.”
The Briton is not bitter about it. He is not even particularly surprised. He is simply stating something that he has observed in recent times.
His rivals no longer see him as a teenager to be guided. They see a points leader to be beaten.
The most enduring piece of guidance Hamilton passed on during that mentorship phase was deceptively simple: stay yourself, and find a way to enjoy what you do.
Antonelli recalled it directly, saying Hamilton told him that “the pressure in this environment is so great that it is easy to forget” the privilege of racing in Formula 1 at all.
That advice earned its keep. Antonelli endured a difficult stretch in the middle of 2025, going several races without scoring points. He leaned on that advice during those weeks and came through the other side.
How meaningful was Hamilton’s mentorship in 2025?
What made Hamilton’s support remarkable was the circumstances under which he gave it. He was navigating his own challenges at Ferrari, adapting to a new team, a new car, and a new chapter of his career.
The seven-time world champion offered his guidance anyway.
Mercedes communications director Bradley Lord acknowledged this publicly. Lord told media that Hamilton “offered his advice, his support and encouragement” to Antonelli during the latter stages of 2025, adding that Hamilton is “a fantastic ally for the young drivers in the sport.”
Hamilton himself was measured about how far he took that role. “I always let him know that I’m there,” Hamilton said. “I try not to encroach, like get in the way or anything like that, but just let them know that he can always lean on me if he ever needs.”
The warmth between them did not disappear overnight. Antonelli had earlier said he could not believe how genuinely “delighted” Hamilton was when he won in China.
The seven-time champion seemed to take real pleasure in watching the teenager who had replaced him at Mercedes take his first victory. That affection still exists. The active, open mentoring, though, clearly does not.
The reason is plain to see in the results. At the Chinese Grand Prix, Antonelli became the youngest pole-sitter in Formula 1 history, breaking a record Sebastian Vettel had held for 18 years.
He qualified 0.222 seconds ahead of Russell, then won the race. The following weekend in Japan, he did it again. Back-to-back pole positions, back-to-back victories, and a place at the top of the championship standings that no teenager had ever held before.
A year ago, Antonelli was tangling with Verstappen on the first lap in Austria, taking grid penalties at Silverstone, and publicly admitting he was “struggling to drive the car” after a suspension upgrade left him searching for confidence.
That driver needed guidance. The one who leads the 2026 championship is a different beast entirely.
What this means for Kimi Antonelli and his future
There is, if you look at it plainly, a compliment hidden inside the change. Hamilton and Verstappen do not withdraw their counsel because a driver has disappointed them.
They withdraw it because the driver no longer needs it, or more precisely, because they can no longer afford to give it.
Sky Sports pundit Martin Brundle has noted that even George Russell, Antonelli’s own teammate, must now treat the 19-year-old as a genuine title rival rather than a young colleague still finding his feet.
That is the new reality inside the Mercedes garage, and it mirrors what is happening across the paddock.
Antonelli’s win in Japan also carried a piece of history beyond the championship table. It gave Italy back-to-back Formula 1 victories for the first time since 1953.
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has tried to keep the temperature down around Antonelli’s title bid. The Austrian joked about the frenzy that follows Italian success and played down suggestions that his driver is already a protagonist in the championship fight.
There is a version of this story that ends neatly, with a boy becoming a man, a student becoming a peer. But the more honest version is messier and more interesting.
Antonelli still has a long way to go. He is 19 years old, leading a world championship, and operating, for the first time, without a safety net of senior advice from the two men most capable of giving it.
Hamilton taught him to enjoy the ride. Verstappen shared what he could while he still felt he could afford to.
Both have now, quietly and without ceremony, stopped. That, more than anything else, might be the truest measure of where Kimi Antonelli stands in Formula 1 today.
