Why Championship Leader Kimi Antonelli Ranks Just 15th in F1 25 New Driver Ratings

• Kimi Antonelli leads the 2026 world championship after five straight wins, yet the official F1 25 game ranks him just 15th in its new 2026 Season Pack driver ratings.
• Low scores for Experience (70) and Awareness (75) drag down the Italian’s overall figure, leaving him behind Esteban Ocon and Valtteri Bottas.
• Max Verstappen tops the ratings on 95, ahead of reigning champion Lando Norris on 94 and George Russell on 93.

Kimi Antonelli has spent the spring of 2026 making Formula 1 look easy. Five consecutive victories, the youngest Monaco winner in history, and a 68-point championship lead before his 20th birthday. There is, it turns out, one place where the teenager still cannot get ahead: the official Formula 1 video game.

When EA Sports released the 2026 Season Pack ratings for F1 25 this week, fans scrolled down the list expecting to find the championship leader near the top. They kept scrolling. Antonelli eventually appears in 15th place overall, below drivers who have spent the season watching his Mercedes disappear up the road, and the reaction online was instant and merciless.

Watch every race of the 2026 season live on Apple TV

The Ratings That Started the Argument

The top of the list is conventional enough. Max Verstappen retains the highest overall rating in the game at 95, despite no longer being the reigning world champion. Lando Norris, the man who took that crown from him last season, sits second on 94. George Russell completes the podium on 93, a figure that carries its own irony given that Russell is currently third in the real championship behind a teammate the game ranks 12 places below him.

Then comes the part that lit up social media. Esteban Ocon and Valtteri Bottas, two respected veterans enjoying unremarkable seasons by their own standards, both rank above Antonelli. Neither has a podium in 2026. Antonelli has five wins from the opening seven rounds. Fans were quick to point out the absurdity, with one widely shared post simply placing the championship table next to the ratings table and letting the gap speak for itself.

The Experience Trap Built Into the System

There is a logic behind the number, even if fans do not like it. The game builds its overall rating from separate categories, including Pace, Racecraft, Awareness and Experience. Antonelli scores strongly where you would expect: his raw speed is not in dispute. The damage comes from two specific fields. His Experience score sits at just 70, the natural consequence of being in his second season, and his Awareness figure of 75 reflects a rookie year that included a string of incidents during his mid-season slump.

Because the overall figure averages across all categories, a driver can win every race on the calendar and still be anchored by the experience column. It is the same mathematical quirk that has historically punished young chargers in sports games across every discipline, from football to basketball. The formula rewards longevity. It has no way to measure momentum.

EA’s rating panel does adjust scores across the season, and Antonelli’s trajectory makes a mid-season correction close to inevitable. For now, though, the most exciting driver of 2026 enters living rooms around the world rated as a midfielder.

Fans Saw the Numbers, Then Made Their Own

The backlash was not limited to Antonelli devotees. Plenty of neutral fans took issue with the principle, arguing that a rating system attached to an official licensed product should bear at least a passing resemblance to the championship it depicts. Others defended the methodology, pointing out that ratings describe a complete driver profile rather than a hot streak, and that a 19-year-old with one full season behind him cannot reasonably score 90 for experience.

Both sides have a point, which is exactly why the debate has run for days. Ratings arguments are a proxy war about something deeper: how we measure greatness in a sport where the car, the team and the moment all conspire to blur individual brilliance. Antonelli’s five-race streak in a dominant Mercedes is either proof of generational talent or proof of a generational car, depending on which side of the argument you wake up on.

A Rating That Ages Worse Every Sunday

What makes the situation delicious for fans is how quickly reality is undermining the spreadsheet. Antonelli did not just win in Monaco; he won from pole, through a red flag interruption, on the circuit where experience is supposed to count for more than anywhere else. He kept his head while drivers with Awareness ratings in the high 80s were finding the barriers. Our full account of that drive, and the red flag chaos he calmly drove through, is in our report on the 2026 Monaco Grand Prix.

The young Italian himself has stayed well clear of the controversy, which is in keeping with how he has handled everything this year. Asked about pressure, he deflects. Asked about his teammate’s struggles, he calls himself the underdog. Asked about records, he points to the races remaining. A driver who spent part of his rookie season privately fearing for his future has learned to give nothing away, and a video game number was never going to draw him out.

The commercial stakes are real, too. The F1 game franchise sells millions of copies a year, and for a generation of younger fans the ratings screen is their first introduction to the drivers themselves. A 13-year-old picking a team in career mode this summer will be told, by the official product of the sport, that the championship leader is the 15th best driver on the grid. Mercedes’ marketing department, which has built its entire 2026 social media push around Antonelli’s rise, will have noticed. So will EA, because nothing drives engagement with a ratings update like an injustice to correct.

Ratings Have Been Wrong Before

There is comfort for Antonelli in history. Lewis Hamilton entered his second season with modest game ratings before rewriting the sport’s record books. Verstappen himself was rated in the low 80s while he was busy becoming the youngest race winner in Formula 1 history. Game ratings have always trailed reality by a season or two, because the panels that set them are, sensibly, slower to crown a driver than the fans are.

If Antonelli keeps this up, the correction will come, in the game and everywhere else. Championship leaders tend to get their numbers eventually. In the meantime, somewhere in Bologna, a teenager with five consecutive grand prix wins is rated two points below Valtteri Bottas at racecraft’s most measurable level, and there might be no better summary of how strange and wonderful his 2026 season has become.

Want more F1Chronicle.com coverage? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list for the best F1 news and analysis on the internet.

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.

More articles by Jack Renn →