- Antonelli watched Bezzecchi win at Mugello and left baffled by MotoGP riders.
- The Mercedes driver called the mid-race bike-swap routine genuinely “crazy.”
- With four wins from five races, Monaco is next up for the F1 championship leader.
The 2026 F1 championship leader, Kimi Antonelli, says he has enormous respect for MotoGP riders but no desire to join them.
The 19-year-old Mercedes driver made the admission on Thursday ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix, after spending last weekend watching the Italian MotoGP round at Mugello.
He was there as a guest, watched his compatriot Marco Bezzecchi win, and came away genuinely shaken by what he saw.
“I think MotoGP, whoever does that, is nuts,” Antonelli told reporters. He added that doing 370km/h on two wheels was something he could not picture for himself. “I would rather stay on four. More stable, more protected.”
A front-row seat at Mugello
Antonelli did not watch the Italian MotoGP round from the stands. He was in the thick of it, waving the chequered flag as Bezzecchi crossed the line for Aprilia on home soil. He then joined the pit-lane celebrations and congratulated both Bezzecchi and Francesco Bagnaia.
According to gpkingdom.it, Ducati riders took him under their wing during the weekend. They teased him and corrected his posture on a MotoGP bike.
He told Fabio Di Giannantonio, only half in jest, that he would only trust a two-seater MotoGP machine if a rider he knew personally was at the controls.
His connection with Italian MotoGP runs deeper than just this one weekend. He had earlier visited Valentino Rossi’s Motor Ranch and had been following Bezzecchi’s results closely throughout the season.
What left Antonelli baffled
Mere raw speed of the MotoGP machinery did not rattle him. What did was something the riders often do after a crash. “If they crash, they are rolling on the ground, in the gravel. They don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said.
What he found hardest to process was the rider’s next move. They often run back to the garage, climb onto a spare bike and, somehow, go faster than before. Antonelli struggled to explain it in any rational terms.
“What is really mind-blowing for me is if they crash, then they run back to the garage, they take the second bike, and they go even quicker,” Antonelli added, before delivering the line now doing the rounds on social media: “For me, that’s crazy. It means you’re missing something in the head.”
That bike-swap routine is itself under review. As GPBlog reports, MotoGP officials are considering getting rid of a spare machine altogether from 2027 onwards.
Monaco beckons after a record-chasing start
Kimi Antonelli arrives in Monaco having won four of the opening five races. A win on Sunday would give him five in a row. He is chasing that record in a season that has already turned F1 on its head, with new rules introducing greater electric power and active aerodynamics in place of DRS.
The changes have unsettled some. Max Verstappen has openly floated the idea of walking away from the sport. Antonelli, though, sees Monaco’s tight layout as a circuit where the new rules cause fewer headaches.
“It’s one of those tracks where the batteries actually last for the whole straight,” he explained.
He said that at a street circuit, a driver who can focus purely on driving, rather than managing energy, is already at an advantage.
“A city track is already a big challenge for the driver, and if you can just worry about driving, that’s the best,” he said.
For now, his attention is firmly back to F1 and the upcoming challenge in Monaco after witnessing a thrilling MotoGP race in Mugello.
