Max Verstappen Says Kimi Antonelli Has Been ‘Rock Solid’ in a ‘Really Impressive’ First Half of the 2026 Season

• Max Verstappen named Kimi Antonelli as the driver who has impressed him most in the opening half of 2026, calling the Mercedes driver “rock solid.”
• Antonelli won five races in a row after a maiden victory in China and carries a 50-point lead over Lewis Hamilton into the summer break.
• ESPN’s own midseason report card handed Antonelli a perfect A+ grade and rated Verstappen’s campaign an A grade even with Red Bull’s form problems this year.

Max Verstappen has named Kimi Antonelli as the driver who has impressed him the most through the first half of the 2026 Formula 1 season, describing the 19-year-old Mercedes driver as “rock solid” in a run that has carried the teenager to the top of the drivers’ standings.

The four-time world champion made the comments after finishing second at the Hungarian Grand Prix, the final round before Formula 1’s summer break, when asked which driver had delivered the strongest performance across the opening 11 races of the season.

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‘Really strong, really solid’

Verstappen did not hesitate when the question was put to him in Budapest. “I think, if you look at the front, Kimi has done a really good job,” he said. “Really strong, really solid, being the strongest in the team.”

He built on the praise by pointing to the setbacks Antonelli has overcome along the way. “I think, if he just keeps it going, of course, he’s also been very unlucky sometimes, so that’s been a bit of a shame, but as a 19-year-old, so far, I think he’s been rock solid. That’s really impressive to see as an outsider.”

Verstappen also reflected on his own year at Red Bull, drawing a contrast with the smoother campaign Antonelli has managed. “For me, it’s definitely been a bit of a jungle this year, but I’m just trying to enjoy it where I can. Of course, when the car is a bit nicer to drive, you can enjoy it a little bit more.”

He rounded off his answer with a personal note about the Mercedes driver. “But, yeah, overall, a very strong performance. It’s nice to see. He’s, first of all, a nice guy and a very strong driver, so that’s a good combination.”

Five straight wins and a growing lead

Antonelli’s title challenge has included a maiden Grand Prix victory at Round 2 in China, the launchpad for a run of five consecutive wins that made him the youngest driver in Formula 1 history to lead the drivers’ standings. The run has come with setbacks along the way: a mechanical issue cost him a finish in Barcelona, and a reliability problem at Silverstone dropped him out of the points. Even so, Antonelli goes into the summer break with a 50-point lead over Hamilton, his nearest rival in the championship, and a 59-point cushion over his own teammate, George Russell.

The gap to his teammate

That gap to Russell has become one of the more surprising storylines of the season. Russell won from pole position with relative ease in Australia at the start of the year, a result that looked like the platform for a title bid of his own. Instead, it took him seven further races to return to the top step of the podium, and in that period Antonelli won five times, building the lead he now holds. Some of the difference between the Mercedes teammates has come down to reliability, with power unit issues affecting Russell at multiple rounds, but the pattern of results has left Antonelli looking like the more complete driver of the pairing through the opening half of the year, especially once the race is underway.

A tougher year for Verstappen

The season has presented a sharper contrast for Verstappen himself. The Red Bull driver sits sixth in the standings, 110 points behind Antonelli, with his car off the pace of Mercedes and Antonelli at several rounds this year. Spins in qualifying at the Austrian and Hungarian Grands Prix, along with a slide from second place at the British Grand Prix, have all been linked to the limitations of this year’s Red Bull rather than a drop-off in Verstappen’s own driving. Asked what the team needs to do once the season resumes, Verstappen set out two priorities. “We need to first find more overall performance,” he explained. “Then we need to fix our problems, where we sometimes just lose performance over a weekend, or even from the start of the race to the end. So, yeah, that is also actually a big priority.”

A season graded by outsiders too

Verstappen’s admiration for Antonelli’s form lines up with an outside assessment of the season so far. ESPN’s Formula 1 writers handed out midseason report cards for all 24 drivers on the grid, and Antonelli topped the list with a perfect A+. The write-up pointed to his six wins, nine podiums and championship lead as reasons the grade could not have been anything else, adding that the teenager has rarely looked overwhelmed by the scale of what he has achieved this year.

Verstappen fared well in the same exercise, earning an A grade of his own. ESPN’s writers credited him for working his way back into contention for podiums and the occasional win in a Red Bull car with clear shortcomings, treating his qualifying spins as evidence of a driver still pushing the car to its limit rather than one in decline, and concluding that his level has only risen this year, even when the results do not yet fully show it.

With the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort marking the resumption of the season on August 21-23, both Verstappen and Antonelli now have three weeks to reset before the fight for the remainder of the championship gets under way.

How the rest of the grid was rated

ESPN’s midseason exercise offered a wider view of just how unusual Antonelli’s form has been next to more experienced rivals. Lewis Hamilton, in his second season at Ferrari, earned an A- and sits second in the championship, with the write-up crediting a change in his engineering team and a win in Barcelona for turning his form around from the previous year, even as a run of penalties across the last three rounds took some shine off his midseason grade. Charles Leclerc, by contrast, was rated a C-, with ESPN pointing to a difficult run after Australia and China that included a crash in Monaco and a spin out of qualifying in Spain, even with a Silverstone win that steadied his year.

Lando Norris, the reigning world champion, was handed an A grade of his own for a title defence that ESPN described as having gone under the radar given how much McLaren has struggled with reliability and pace compared with last year. Norris goes into the break off the back of his Hungarian Grand Prix victory and has out-qualified teammate Oscar Piastri 11 times from 4 across every format so far this season, a gap ESPN felt fairly reflected in Piastri’s own C- grade for a campaign still finding its footing under this year’s rules.

Set against that spread of results, from Antonelli’s perfect grade through to the C- and D-range verdicts further down the order, Verstappen’s praise for the Mercedes driver carries extra significance. It comes from a driver who has spent four years at the top of the sport, and who now finds himself, by his own admission, working through a season unlike the ones that brought him his championships.

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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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