'A truly special driver': Bruno Michel on Kimi Antonelli's ascent from F2 to F1 World Champion

When he arrived on the FIA Formula 2 grid in 2024, there was already a great weight of expectation on young shoulders for Kimi Antonelli.

The Italian driver had just made the step-up from Formula Regional level to the F2 grid and rumours were already swirling about a potential future as a Mercedes F1 driver.

Two years on and the Bolognese driver has become the youngest ever driver to win the World Championship.

Formula 2 CEO Bruno Michel reflects on the Italian's time on the grid, his stand-out moments and just how impressed he has been since first racing on F1 weekends back in 2024.

WINNING WAS A MATTER OF TIME

"His victory at Silverstone in the wet was impressive. Winning in the wet is always a good sign for a driver. At that point, he hadn't had a win yet but it was just a question of when, not if.

"I think it was a great achievement, and he did it at Silverstone as well, which is a quite demanding circuit. Winning in the wet requires a lot of control, a lot of speed as well.

"It was probably the first major moment he really had in Formula 2 where people started to understand just how talented this guy was.

"It's always difficult to say how special a driver is going to be, but it's always easy to see when one has got something that a lot of other drivers don't have, that's for sure. And that was the best example.

"His Feature win in Budapest was a smart one. That's exactly what you expect from a driver as well. It's always impressive to see this kind of maturity in a race like Budapest. He needed to execute the strategy that his team put together that allowed him to do that. So yes, it was impressive."

BRAVERY AND SKILL ON DISPLAY

"Eau Rouge separates the good from the great drivers, and that's exactly what he showed, especially in the wet.

"I've seen a few drivers overtaking in Eau Rouge. In those kinds of conditions, it's true that you need to have very, very strong control of the car, and both drivers need to have confidence in what the other one is doing, because there's not so much space, the track is not so wide, and you need to be sure that it's not going to end up in contact.

"It's quite impressive to do that there. You can always wait until the Kemmel Straight if you're quicker, but he wanted to do it there. That move on Franco Colapinto was a masterclass."

HANDLING THE PRESSURE

"Formula 2 was quite complicated for him. He didn't do F3, and you can understand why. Toto sent him directly to F2 and there was a good reason for that since Lewis Hamilton had been announced at Ferrari at the beginning of the season.

"But it didn't help him at all at the beginning of the season, because F3 is the best preparation you can have for F2, and coming directly from a Formula Regional, even if he had won there, was a big step considering the format of the weekend, the tyres, and of course, racing on the F1 weekend.

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"If you don't have this learning process, it makes your life a bit more difficult, even if you're an extremely talented driver.

"For him, having to handle that kind of pressure, people asking ‘is he worth it? Can he go to Mercedes, a team and car not at the back of the grid?’ So there were high expectations on him, and he had to deal with that.

"I must say that at the end of the day, he handled it extremely well. And that showed the confidence he has and the belief he has in himself.

"I'm sure a lot of drivers would have been thrown into a situation like that and not come out the same way. He didn't win the F2 Championship, he was not the best rookie, but he was up there. And considering the circumstances, it was not an easy situation for him."

A DESERVING CHAMPION IN FORMULA 1

"What he has been doing this year is amazing. To move from Regional up to F2, then to F1 in such a short amount of time, a different car, a different team, everything was completely different for him.

"A driver that has this kind of quality can endure going through those challenges, and you need to have the team and the Team Principal behind you saying ‘it doesn't matter, we trust you, no worries’.

"That's what happened to Max Verstappen when he got to Formula 1 as well. To earn that full support from the team is not easy, but that’s what you need to do. Considering it's only his second year, it's amazing.

"I'm not going to say we were expecting him to be that fast. Everybody knew that he was special, there was no doubt about that. But to come up to F1 like that...you don't see a driver like this often, so good for him and good for Mercedes."

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ANOTHER F2 GRADUATE TURNED F1 CHAMPION

"Well, we should have had a graduate become Champion earlier, but Max didn't help by winning everything for the last couple of years!

"But these last two years have proven that Formula 2 is a fantastic training ground for Formula 1, and Formula 2 is there to prepare drivers for F1.

"It's the first mission of Formula 2, before everything else, and to make sure that when those drivers are arriving in Formula 1, they're ready.

"The fact that they race in front of Formula 1 on the same tracks, with a limit to track time, with a format that is designed for this preparation, with the same car - there are many, many reasons that make Formula 2 the best preparation for Formula 1. It's always a pleasure to see that, but it's not a surprise.

"We're going to have more and more drivers winning World Championships coming from Formula 2. Formula 2 started in 2017, Lewis was winning at that time, then Max started in 2020s, and those two drivers didn't come through F2, so that's why it took a bit of time before Lando Norris arrived, and now Kimi."

FUTURE CHAMPIONSHIPS ON THE HORIZON

"There will be more titles for Kimi, that's for sure. I'm sure he's going to have an incredible career in Formula 1. But there will be, of course, more drivers coming from Formula 2, arriving in Formula 1, and winning the World Championship because that's what we're here for.

"Whether they can win in the first year is difficult. Before Kimi, the other one that almost did it was Lewis, coming from GP2 to almost getting the title in the first season in Formula 1, but he couldn’t do it either.

"The fact that a lot of F2 drivers are doing FP1s like at the weekend in Mexico is extremely important, because that's also the way they start to get prepared for a Formula 1 career. But we are here to get them ready for that step-up with what we do."