Toto Wolff makes remarkable Kimi Antonelli claim: 'He wouldn't have lasted'

Toto Wolff believes Kimi Antonelli would likely have been dropped by a rival team had he endured his torrid 2025 spell anywhere other than Mercedes.

The Mercedes team principal made the remarkable claim while reflecting on Antonelli's journey to F1 champion, which included a nine-race run of grands prix in Europe last season in which he scored a miserable three points.

The 20-year-old Italian arrived in F1 off the back of a F2 campaign with Prema in which he finished sixth, hardly a dominant platform typically demanded of a direct graduate into a frontline factory seat.

Mercedes bypassed the conventional route of blooding Antonelli at another team, the kind of pathway Red Bull and Ferrari have used with programmes such as Racing Bulls and Haas, instead throwing him straight into the deep end.

That decision came under pressure as the 2025 season unfolded and Antonelli struggled for results and performances.

Wolff, though, maintained faith in his young star, yielding his astonishing charge this year to becoming the youngest F1 champion in the sport's history.

After a few days to allow the enormity of Antonelli's success to sink in, speaking to Sky Sports F1, he said: "The week was good.

"You realised that we won the championship with a very special young man. It was a positive week mindset.

"I wake up in the morning, and I'm thinking that was a good one."

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Wolff then turned to the scrutiny Antonelli faced during his difficult run last season, crediting the team's approach for keeping him in the car.

"What I'm particularly proud of is that I don't think he would have lasted in other teams after an F2 season, which wasn't overwhelming, and this spell of nine races without any points [sic] last year," Wolff said.

"We trusted our data, trusted our feeling about the personality and the potential, because there are so many who have come out now and said, 'What a talent!', and that wasn't the journey.

"The journey was developing the talent, nurturing, mentoring, shielding him, protecting him, and eventually he and the car just delivered absolutely amazingly."