Leclerc makes honest Kimi Antonelli title admission amid Ferrari challenge

Charles Leclerc has admitted he would be ‘happy’ to see Kimi Antonelli crowned F1 2026 world champion—if neither Ferrari driver can stop the Mercedes teenager.

Leclerc made this honest admission at a time where the title race is intensifying, with the early Mercedes dominance having faded as the team bides its time to next upgrade the W17. Leclerc sees his younger self in Antonelli, Mercedes’ teenage championship leader.

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Antonelli has established a lead of 50 points at the top of the Drivers’ standings after his impressive start to Formula 1’s new era.

Antonelli won six Grands Prix in the first-half of F1 2026, which included a five-race winning streak. But, the competition is fighting back.

Antonelli won just one of the last five Grands Prix. The sport has seen five different winners across its latest five rounds.

That included Leclerc winning the British Grand Prix.

It is Leclerc’s Ferrari teammate, Lewis Hamilton, who serves as the closest title threat to Antonelli right now. Leclerc is in P4, another 31 points back from Hamilton.

That makes Leclerc a rank outsider for the crown, 81 points back from Antonelli, but as Max Verstappen proved last year, this is not an impossible deficit to whittle away.

If neither Hamilton nor Leclerc can win the title, then Leclerc will be “happy” if Antonelli is the driver that does.

“I’m not thinking about the championship just yet; I want to win another race. The work I’m putting in is paying off,” Leclerc told Sky Italy.

“If Ferrari didn’t win the title, I’d be happy for Kimi to win it. He’s incredibly enthusiastic – it reminds me of myself when I made my debut.”

Leclerc has returned to form over recent rounds after the slump which threatened to derail his season. Silverstone was a critical turning point in more ways than one.

Leclerc made the front row and won the British Grand Prix. But in addition to the result, Leclerc also found a better way forward with his SF-26 machinery.

Asked if his earlier F1 2026 issues stemmed from his Ferrari car, or the new regulations, Leclerc said: “No, I don’t think it’s with the Ferrari itself. I think it’s more with this generation of cars.

“I’ve got quite an aggressive driving style in general. I think that has been a strength during my career, but with these cars, sometimes you’ve got to be careful not to go to the other side because then the dip is quite big and you can start losing quite a lot of performance.

“PU-wise, if you are not efficient, if you don’t go on the throttle in a clean way, if you just don’t do things consistently, always the same, then it starts becoming a bit tricky because you get into very different issues where your speed into the next corner is different. That changes your braking point, and you are always readapting your references. It makes it very, very difficult.

“So, I think there was a little bit of that.

“Then there were just a few things that I changed at Silverstone to try and fit this generation of cars and to try and help my driving with it. That made it quite a lot better.

“But as I said at Silverstone, this is something I want to prove on multiple racetracks. It’s not only with one race win — and I’m very happy with the race win — but it’s not only with one race win that now everything is fine and I’m relaxed.

“There’s a lot of work in order to try and keep that form and keep that feeling, most of all, because if the feeling is there, it has always been the case that when I feel good with a car, normally the lap times and the performance come.

“So I’ll just try and work as hard as possible to try and keep that feeling for the rest of the season and on different track layouts.”

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Asked to pinpoint the actual turning point, Leclerc added: “It’s very difficult to say because it’s not as easy as there being one moment where you realise everything you’ve done wrong.

“It’s a lot of work and trying to understand in the data what is making me less comfortable with these cars.

“But there was a moment on Friday night at Silverstone where I saw a detail and I was like, ‘Okay, this is very difficult to quantify, but if I happen to change that and make it more to my liking, then my feeling will most likely be a lot better.’ When I did that on Saturday afternoon, when we could change the car, things were a lot better.

“So, yeah, that’s a good thing. But unfortunately, I cannot give much more detail.

“I don’t know if it makes much sense to keep trying to explain it without giving the details, because there’s very little sense in what I say that way. But just to say that it relies on very fine details, and it’s not as black and white as it might seem. But it was cool to see that it paid off.

“It was a bit of everything, and it was in a particular part of the corner. It was not braking. And I feel better with it.”

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