Step inside the Mercedes garage and you will quickly learn to watch your back. According to Motorsport.com Italia, Formula 1 world champion Andrea Kimi Antonelli has a very particular habit when greeting the crew working on his machine: sneaking up on them and delivering a sudden pinch to the nipples. Nobody in the box is safe from the twenty-year-old from Bologna, whose fondness for pranks, tickling, and throwing cake in colleagues' faces on their birthdays has helped forge an extraordinarily tight bond with the team.
Behind the lighthearted chaos lies a grounded attitude nurtured long before he reached the pinnacle of motorsport, tracing back to the days he followed his father Marco around the paddocks. Nathan Tupper, a power unit technician for the number 12 car, describes the chaos as pure entertainment, noting that the driver simply acts like a normal twenty-year-old. Senior second mechanic Ash Jones and first mechanic Tom Mason echo the sentiment, explaining that Antonelli remains remarkably relaxed and playful even in the high-pressure moments right before qualifying sessions.
That same playful energy contrasts sharply with the raw learning curve of his early days. Back in the spring of 2024 during a test in Austria, mechanic Franck Bougeard remembers a seventeen-year-old Kimi with a blue cap and messy hair. Those initial tests brought harsh lessons and crashes, including a chassis-damaging impact in Abu Dhabi and another heavy shunt in Monza that left the young driver deeply apologetic. Bougeard recalls Antonelli returning to the garage mortified over the extra workload, admitting that his father Marco had scolded him for half an hour and his mother had been reduced to tears. Marco himself even caused a stir by sprinting across the track in Abu Dhabi after an incident, prompting a gentle warning from mechanics to let the professionals handle the ambulances.
When Antonelli stepped up to the official squad for the 2025 season, one of his main worries was creating too much work for the crew. Tom Mason reassured him then with a clear message: as long as he gave everything on track, the mechanics would gladly match his effort. Even through difficult weekends like Spa and the inevitable pressure of replacing Lewis Hamilton, Antonelli never brought negativity into the garage. Instead, his ability to bounce back immediately from a bad session infected the entire crew with enthusiasm.
Beyond the speed, the driver's memory and warmth left a lasting mark on the personnel. Ash Jones notes that Antonelli took just a couple of days to learn everyone's name and personal details, ensuring he first reconnected with the test team crew before greeting the rest of the official squad. That deep mutual respect carried through intense moments of adversity, such as the miracle repair job the mechanics pulled off after a heavy FP3 crash in Melbourne during the 2026 season, which set him up for a front-row start and left him genuinely incredulous.
From early shunts and frantic fatherly lectures to stunning victories in China, Austin, and a memorable charge from the back in Monza, the journey culminated in tears and embraces on Sunday evening in Mexico City. The world title arrived at the end, but Kimi had already conquered his garage long before the championship was decided.
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