Image source, Getty ImagesImage caption, Kimi Antonelli's victory from 19th on the grid is the second furthest back a driver has come from to win a grand prix
F1 Correspondent at MonzaPublished21 minutes agoKimi Antonelli's stunning victory in the Italian Grand Prix from 19th on the grid will go down in Formula 1 folklore - and, remarkably, his team boss Toto Wolff said that he had seen it coming on Saturday.
After Sunday's race, Wolff said that beforehand he thought that one of his two drivers was going to be standing on the top of the podium.
It was an eye-opening statement given they started the race 17 places apart on the grid, George Russell on the front row alongside shock pole winner Pierre Gasly's Alpine; Antonelli on the penultimate row.
"I thought one of the two is going to win," Wolff said. "Either George, because he was on the front row, or Kimi because he's going to walk over water, here at Monza. And I felt that yesterday also."
Wolff was asked to explain why he felt a performance he was comparing to a miracle was on the cards.
"It's been a while that I've seen drivers," he said. "Energy levels, mindset or behavioural pattern. I knew that was his mission today, to win the race. I chatted with his father yesterday. The father also saw that coming.
"These are the moments where you can see how a weekend is panning out through the sessions that a special moment can come."
Antonelli takes stunning Monza win from 19th on grid
Antonelli knew coming in that he would be starting at the back because of a grid penalty for using too many engines this year.
Russell knew that he had to make the most of this opportunity and cut as much as he could out of his team-mate's 59-point championship lead.
Fifth or sixth was the general consensus for what might be realistically possible for Antonelli, who himself said after the race that he had "thought a podium was possible".
What changed everything was his remarkable progress in the early laps of the race, which brought to mind another Biblical miracle, the parting of the Red Sea.
Antonelli was 14th after a relatively conservative first lap, then 12th at the end of lap two, when Charles Leclerc crashed his Ferrari to bring the race to a temporary halt.
"With the red flag, I was already P12," Antonelli said. "And then I knew that I could have a shot at it."
A lap after the restart, he was up to eighth, and on the back of the leading group of cars running nose to tail. Seventh a lap later, after dispatching Lando Norris' McLaren.
By now, Russell was in the lead, having wasted little time dispensing with Gasly. But the Briton sensed trouble.
"A great race from the neutral perspective," Russell said. "As soon as I saw Kimi up to P5 after a handful of laps, I knew he was going to be in the fight with us. That was clearly a very impressive opening few laps."
Wolff said: "The differentiator today was the ability to go through the traffic. We've seen it with other great ones in the past. Lewis (Hamilton), who did it in some of the races. That's what he's shown today. When a driver and a car are one, then there's nothing that can stop them."
Image source, EPAImage caption, Kimi Antonelli has now won seven of the 13 grands prix so far this season
Briefly, for a few laps, Russell and Max Verstappen threatened to break away in the lead while Antonelli was finding a way past Gasly, the two McLarens and Hamilton's Ferrari.
But Russell and Verstappen were fighting at the front, costing each other time, and Antonelli was up to third by lap 13, just 1.8secs off Verstappen in the lead, with Russell between them.
Three laps later, the Mercedes drivers were running one-two, and starting to swap places themselves, until, with Russell leading, it was suggested by that team that they give it a rest and try to break away from Verstappen.
If Russell could not do so, they said, they would "invert the cars" - put Antonelli into the lead to try himself. But slowly they began to inch clear.
At this point, coming up to half-distance, the race victory was still up in the air. There was a virtual safety car (VSC), called when Lance Stroll's Aston Martin broke down at the first corner.
Mercedes called Antonelli for new tyres - a decision they had to make as he had switched to the medium compound at the red flag and that would not make it to the end. Russell continued on his hard tyres.
"It was the right thing to split the strategies," Wolff said, "because we didn't know what the better one would be. In the morning meeting, we said the hard tyre is going to go forever. You can start on it and finish on it. And you can see with George, it was a forever tyre.
"At that stage, the system said that the one-stop comes out ahead, that two-stop was coming close to the end, but didn't catch it. That's what the software said."
Antonelli was in no mood to obey a computer algorithm. Rejoining 14.3secs behind Russell, with 24 laps to go and four cars between them, winning was not an easy task. But he made it look like it.
Antonelli caught Russell with five laps to go and the win now looked inevitable. There was a hiccup when he ran off the track at turn one with four laps to go after Russell blocked his attack on the inside, and Antonelli lost grip on the loose rubber off line and slid into the gravel trap.
That dropped him to 1.7secs off again, but a lap and a half later, he drove past Russell on the straight between the second Lesmo corner and Ascari, and that was that.
The home fans, with split loyalties before the race between Antonelli and Ferrari, screamed with delight as he crossed the line, 60 years since the last time an Italian won his home race.
"It's one that I will remember forever," Antonelli said. "Definitely the fans gave that little bit extra to push more. The support has been great this weekend.
"Definitely seeing the grandstand cheering every lap it gave that little bit of extra to push more and to try and do even better to win it."
The win, Wolff said, was "how the circle closed" after Antonelli's difficult introduction to F1, when he crashed in a one-off outing in free practice at this race two years ago, a moment Wolff said was "probably the toughest moment in his career. For himself and his family. A moment where everyone doubted, including himself.
"Two years later, it's the biggest glory, the biggest moment of his career (so far). That's probably going to be one of his biggest (ever)."
A maiden season in F1 last year followed in which Antonelli showed flashes of promise but little that indicated what has happened this year would follow.
"When you talk about the complete driver, there's the aspect of experience that needs to come," Wolff said.
"There is also that he has this easiness of a young man that helps to overcome difficult moments. That also helps in managing not getting ahead of himself when having these glorious moments.
"There is the fact of is he capable of maturing, of staying the personality that he is, humble, with a lot of introspection, self-criticism, in order to develop. And that only the future is going to show - whether he is like a few drivers before him a complete deal.
"But it is still surprising and amazing to see how quickly he develops. For me, it's like an AI agent that continuously self-improves and learns. That's the speed. And there also, his age is for sure beneficial. The ability, cognitively, intellectually, to constantly become better."
After the race, Russell tried to put a brave face on it, but it was impossible not to see how much it was hurting him.
Speaking in the news conference, sentences ran out of steam, his voice was on the point of breaking at times.
Russell gently pointed out, in not quite so many words, that without the VSC he probably would have won - "it would have been very interesting to see how the race would have panned out if there was no VSC".
But he was well aware of what Antonelli's stellar performance meant. The strategy, he said, "takes nothing away from Kimi's drive altogether".
And the championship, he now knows, is almost a lost cause. Antonelli's win moves him 66 points clear.
Russell talked about "taking the positives", about how, after a "very tough run" in the early summer, since the season re-started in the Netherlands two weeks ago, "every lap, every session, I've been sort of in the mix of the top three positions, similar to where I was at the start of the year".
That's true. But there has not been a hint all year of Russell being able to put together a run of results where he consistently beats Antonelli, which is now his only hope.
"It's definitely Kimi's in control of it," Russell said. "And, you know, he's deserving to be in control of it.
"For me personally, I'm not even thinking about a fight or a comeback or anything. I'm just focused on taking it race by race and trying to maximise every single weekend.
"He's performing incredibly well. It's going to be exceptionally challenging to overcome that gap. So I'm just sort of accepting that is what it is."
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