Fisichella Hails End To Italy’s 20-Year Win Wait

• Giancarlo Fisichella says he is glad to see Kimi Antonelli end Italy’s 20-year wait for a Grand Prix winner
• Antonelli’s win in China was the first by an Italian driver in the 20 years following Fisichella’s own victory in Malaysia
• Fisichella believes the 19-year-old can handle title pressure even after his championship lead shrank from 61 points to 25

Giancarlo Fisichella carried the flag for Italian drivers in Formula 1 from the mid-1990s through to the late 2000s, winning three races along the way. He was the last Italian to win a Grand Prix, a run stretching back to his victory in Malaysia in 2006, until Kimi Antonelli tore up the record books at the start of this year. For two decades, every conversation about the next Italian winner eventually circled back to Fisichella’s name as the last man to have done it.

The 53-year-old is not remotely put out by being replaced in that regard. Speaking to Tom Clarkson on this week’s episode of Beyond The Grid, Fisichella made clear he is happy to hand over the mantle he held for two decades.

“I will say ‘finally!’” Fisichella said. “I’m happy about that because 20 years is too long. You know, the last Italian winner of a Grand Prix was myself 20 years ago, and now this year, with Kimi, this is done.

“And I’m really happy about what he’s doing so far. He is so clever. He’s so quick. And he won five races, five pole positions in a row. This is something amazing. I won three races in my life, in 231 Grands Prix. And he won already five races in just less than 30 races of his career. So, this is just great.”

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A Run That Set New Records

Antonelli’s winning streak began in China and continued through Japan, Miami, Canada and Monaco, five wins in total. He won his first three races from pole position, a record no other driver has matched at the start of a career. He achieved all of it before turning 20, racing in only his second full season in the sport.

That run has now come to an end. Reliability problems wrecked his chances in Barcelona-Catalunya and again at the British Grand Prix, and he was outpaced by his own team mate in Austria. Even so, Antonelli remains at the top of the Drivers’ Championship. His lead over George Russell peaked at 61 points and now stands at 25, a swing that has turned what looked like a cruise into a fight with more than half the season still to run.

Fisichella, for his part, has no doubts about how the teenager will handle the pressure that comes with that shrinking gap. Having watched Antonelli’s rise from the outside, he sees a driver capable of separating the calm exterior from the competitor underneath.

“I think he’s got a chance,” Fisichella said. “He needs to think just race by race. Not taking too much pressure. Concentrate like he drove, in the last couple of races, and, and they can he can fight for the championship. I’m sure.

“Kimi, his face, he looks like a baby, but, when, when he closed the visor, a completely different, story.”

Doubts After a Difficult Debut

Antonelli’s rookie season in 2025 was not the smooth introduction his current form might suggest. He recorded three podiums across the year, a solid return for a first campaign, but his form dipped at points too, with mistakes mixed in among the highlights. Those spells were enough to make some in the sport question whether Mercedes had rushed a teenager into a race seat before he was ready.

A year on, those questions have mostly gone quiet, replaced by five wins and a Drivers’ Championship lead built from the opening races of the season. Fisichella sees a direct line between the rocky first year and the driver now leading the standings, arguing that the difficult lessons of 2025 are exactly what allowed this year’s form to follow.

It is a common enough arc in Formula 1, a rookie season spent absorbing knocks before the second year brings the pay-off, but Antonelli’s turnaround has come faster and gone further than most. Three podiums as a debutant is a respectable return on its own. Five wins and a Drivers’ Championship lead the following year is not the typical next step.

From a Crash at Monza to a Title Fight

Fisichella pointed back further still, to Antonelli’s very first Free Practice outing, at Monza two years ago.

“The first ever, he was in Monza two years ago and he crashed the car,” Fisichella said. “So, it wasn’t a good start. And then last year, he was a bit up and down with some mistakes with not good performances. But I think this year, with the experience of last year, especially with a good car now, he is very confident and he’s very comfortable in the car.”

A Wait Going Back to Ascari

Fisichella’s own breakthrough, in Malaysia in 2006, came in a career that spanned 231 Grands Prix and three wins. Antonelli has already matched that win tally in under 30 starts. For a country that has produced Ferrari and the tifosi that follow the sport so closely, the 20-year gap between home Grand Prix winners had grown into something bigger than a statistic, and Fisichella’s own name had sat at the top of that list for two decades before Antonelli’s run began in China at the start of this year.

The wait for an Italian World Champion runs longer still. Alberto Ascari was the last Italian to win the Drivers’ title, back in 1953. Asked whether Italy had missed having a home winner, Fisichella did not hesitate.

“Yeah, a lot,” he said. “Not just a single race winner, but also the World Championship winner. I don’t remember when, 70, 80 years? It’s too much!”

Whether Antonelli can close that longer gap will not be settled this year, and probably not next either. World Championships are won over full seasons, not five races in the spring, and Russell has already shown he can cut a 61-point deficit down to 25 with the right run of form.

But with more than half the season still to run and a 19-year-old still leading the table, the questions Fisichella is being asked about Antonelli are the kind that come with genuine title contention, not polite speculation about a promising rookie. For a driver who spent 20 years as the answer to a trivia question about Italy’s last Grand Prix winner, that alone is worth celebrating. The teenager remains the man to beat, and the driver a former Italian winner is happy to hand his old record to.

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Written by

Jack Renn

Jack Renn is an editor at F1 Chronicle and a veteran motorsport journalist with 25 years of experience covering Formula 1 and international motorsport. A member of the Association Internationale de la Presse Sportive (AIPS), the global body representing accredited sports journalists, Jack has spent his career reporting from paddocks and press rooms across the F1 calendar. His work spans race analysis, technical insight, and in-depth features, giving readers authoritative coverage grounded in decades of firsthand experience at the highest level of the sport.

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