Kimi Antonelli: The post from the next day reveals a hilarious detail
Kimi Antonelli is still on cloud nine after his triumph at Monza. The day after his extraordinary comeback—which took him from 19th place to victory in the Italian Grand Prix—the Mercedes driver shared his emotions on Instagram: “First place at home! It’s hard to describe yesterday—it’s like a daydream. What I experienced is something I’ll never forget. The podium at Monza is indescribable—the warmth of all the fans and the never-ending sea of people.”
He added: “I really want to thank everyone who made this possible and who is making this year special.” In the carousel posted on social media, however, there’s also a photo that immediately went viral. Antonelli was photographed winding a strand of spaghetti directly off the trophy. The shape of this year’s trophy had already gone viral, and somehow the world championship leader decided to poke some fun at it.
It took sixty years to see an Italian driver triumph again at the Italian Grand Prix (Clay Regazzoni, who won at Monza in 1970 and 1975 in a Ferrari, was from Ticino, and therefore Swiss, not Italian as some clueless individuals have written in recent days). And this long drought couldn’t have ended in a more spectacular way: Andrea Kimi Antonelli claimed victory at Monza, in front of the Italian crowd, completing an extraordinary comeback from 19th on the grid.
A feat destined to go down in the history of Italian Formula 1. Before the young Mercedes driver, the last Italian to win the Italian Grand Prix at Monza was Ludovico Scarfiotti in 1966, during a completely different era of motorsports. Sixty years later, the Italian flag returns to the top step of the podium at the “Temple of Speed.” Bringing it back is a young man born in Bologna in August 2006, who, in front of his home fans, wrote one of the most thrilling chapters in the recent history of Italian motorsport.
The comeback was anything but straightforward. In the final stages of the race, at the Prima Variante, Antonelli experienced a nerve-wracking moment: after ending up on the loose gravel and then in the gravel trap, it seemed he had squandered any chance of victory. But the 20-year-old from Bologna immediately regained his rhythm, resumed the chase, and took the lead. “I realized victory was within my reach after the restart. I told myself: I have to win this, I have to win this. I believed in it, especially when I was behind George. I could see the whole crowd in the stands cheering me on, and that really fired me up,” said a very emotional Antonelli in his post-race interview, adding: “This is a dream come true. There’s still a long way to go; we have to keep our heads down. But for now, I want to enjoy this victory.”
