Whilst the new Formula 1 world champion, Kimi Antonelli, is being compared to Ayrton Senna, Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff is keen to put these comparisons into perspective
To this day, Ayrton Senna remains the last Brazilian Formula 1 driver to have won the World Championship. Yet whilst a new generation of Brazilian racing drivers is currently coming through, it is not they who are drawing comparisons with their country’s legend.
Kimi Antonelli’s spectacular drives this season – and, on the surface, his curly brown hair – have earned him such comparisons, particularly following five consecutive Grand Prix victories at the start of the year. Only nine other Formula 1 drivers had achieved this before, and Senna was, in fact, not among them.
Antonelli secured his fifth consecutive victory with a commanding ‘Grand Slam’ at the Monaco Grand Prix, the venue where Senna was at his most dominant, which further fuelled the comparisons. The three-time world champion remains the record holder for pole positions and victories in the Principality and is renowned for his mesmerising qualifying laps there.
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said in Barcelona in the week following the Monaco Grand Prix: “We keep emphasising to our friends in the Italian press: Please don’t draw any comparisons with Ayrton Senna or ‘Il Fenomeno’.”
“I believe the Gazzetta [dello Sport] wrote that he’d won five races in a row, which is incredible for a young man. But we haven’t won a World Championship yet, and he’s 19,” said Wolff at the time.
Antonelli eventually secured the world championship title at the Mexican Grand Prix. A few days later, ahead of the race in São Paulo, he visited the Senna family. At Interlagos, he raced wearing a yellow helmet reminiscent of the Brazilian’s.
“Comparing Kimi to Senna, … “I’ve never been particularly keen on making that comparison, because Senna is – just like Frank [Williams] and Ron [Dennis] – a legend of the sport: both as a person and as a racing driver,” says Wolff now, following the Brazilian Grand Prix.
” “I think setting such high standards for a 20-year-old driver puts a lot of pressure on him. That’s why I don’t want to compare him at this stage. He is Kimi, and Senna was Senna,” said the Mercedes team principal. “But it’s lovely to see how the Senna family has welcomed him.”
“ “They say it’s the first time it’s looked as though there might be a second ‘Senninha’. It’s the first time you can say: ‘OK, he’s a bit like him.’ But perhaps at this stage he’s still a ‘Senninha’ and not yet a Senna. So let the ‘Senninha’ develop; let him become a Senna.”