Toto Wolff confirms Kimi Antonelli's Mercedes future by rubbishing "nonsense" rumors

Toto Wolff has confirmed Andrea Kimi Antonelli's Mercedes future for 2026. In line with this, he has even deemed the Williams/Alpine rumors as complete 'nonsense'.

The 19-year-old is competing in his maiden F1 campaign in the ongoing 2025 season. After 17 rounds, he is currently in seventh place in the drivers' standings with 78 points.

In recent times, several rumors made the rounds on the web regarding Kimi Antonelli getting dropped by Mercedes at the end of the season. However, following the Italian's strong performance during the Azerbaijan Grand Prix race weekend, Toto Wolff has confirmed via Sky Italia that Antonelli is going nowhere at least for 2026.

"The Alpine and Williams speculations are completely nonsense. He will stay here in 2026 100%."

Kimi Antonelli has had a pretty up-and-down 2025 F1 season. While he had a strong P4 showing in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, his results have not been consistent. This is one of the reasons why he is in seventh place in the drivers' standings in comparison to teammate George Russell's fourth place.

The Brit, after the first 17 rounds, has put on board 212 points, alongside a Grand Prix win and seven podium finishes. Now that Toto Wolff has confirmed Kimi Antonelli as his driver for 2026, the latter would ideally like a run of clean races until the end of Round 24, the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

"The outcome could have been different": Kimi Antonelli's take on Azerbaijan GP

Kimi Antonelli was on song during the three-race weekend in Baku (Round 17). Firstly, in qualifying, he showed his raw pace by putting his Mercedes challenger in P4 ahead of senior teammate George Russell (P5). Then in the main 51-lap race, he kept his composure to come away with a solid P4 finish.

However, Antonelli felt that more was possible had a few things panned out in his favor. In line with this, he dwelled on his tussle with Liam Lawson (who started P3) via a post-race interaction with GPBlog, and added the following:

"I could see when he was using the energy and when he wasn't. You know, I was struggling quite a bit on traction. I was getting close to the end of sector one and halfway through sector two, but then in all those critical traction phases, I was struggling and just couldn't get the momentum."

"Only on hard I had quite a bit of pace advantage and I could get past, but it's a shame because I lost quite a bit of time behind him, especially in the first stint, and probably the outcome could have been different, but you know, still decent result, and we'll try to do better in Singapore."

Next up on the race calendar is this week's Singapore Grand Prix that will take place around the tight and twisty Marina Bay Street Circuit.