Kimi Antonelli secured the 2026 Formula 1 world championship after a remarkable campaign, which included overcoming a persistent challenge with track limits that heavily influenced the early stages of his season.
The young Italian driver admitted that keeping his car strictly within the white lines proved to be a difficult hurdle, requiring technical adjustments and valuable advice from his inner circle.
"At one point my father told me, 'if you commit another track limit infraction, I'll lower you by ten centimeters!' so I thought it was better to avoid it!" Antonelli recalled with a smile during a press conference in San Marino.
The Mercedes star explained that the breakthrough came from changing his visual reference points through corners, a technique refined with input from his father and former driver Matteo Bobbi.
"It is also a matter of how you look at the corner exit and where you point your gaze, because when you aim your eyes at the white line, it's normal to risk ending up on it with your outer tires. But if you aim slightly to the left of the white line, it's much easier to get the corner exit right," he noted.
The turning point of his season arrived at Austin, widely regarded as one of the toughest circuits for maintaining track boundary compliance, where he successfully kept mistakes to an absolute minimum.
"It was the decisive weekend because we can say that Austin is the most difficult track for track limits. And in the race, I only made one mistake because Carlos Sainz got in my way a bit," he concluded.
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