Antonelli’s “heart attack” moment in emotional F1 Chinese GP victory

Kimi Antonelli joked that a late-race incident gave him a “heart attack” before he navigated the final tours to secure a maiden Formula 1 victory at the Chinese Grand Prix.

The Italian put on a composed and largely error-free performance to back up his career-first pole position, with victory and the fastest lap in Shanghai. Had it not been for a single lap led by Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton, he would have become the youngest driver to complete a grand slam victory.

Locking up and running off at the Turn 14 hairpin with a near-10-second margin back to team-mate George Russell, Antonelli feared the worst.

Battling back the tears, he said: “I’m speechless. I’m about to cry, to be honest. But yeah, thank you so much to my team because they helped me to achieve this dream.

“I’m super happy. I said yesterday that I really wanted to bring Italy back on top, and we did today. Even though I gave myself a little bit of a heart attack towards the end with a flat spot, it was a good race.”

Although the error ultimately came without a tangible cost, F1’s newest race winner took a valuable lesson from the moment.

“There’s so much that I’ve learned, but first of all it’s never to relax too much because today it went well, but it could have been worse,” Antonelli explained. “So just always try to stay on point and keep the focus because today at the end I opened the room for mistakes and the mistake happened.

“I just need to make sure it doesn’t happen again. And then of course also just trying to focus on doing things right, procedure-wise, warm-up, bringing the tyre into the stint. I think it was a massive lesson. Also today was very cold and it was a good lesson to see what was the best way to keep the tyres in a good window.”

Antonelli lost out to Hamilton’s fast-starting Ferrari into Turn 1, but quickly fought back using Overtake Mode to sweep past into Turn 14, then defend into Turn 1 on the following lap.

Reflecting on the launch, he said: “It was difficult. It was not an easy start and probably I covered a bit too much on the inside and gave too much room to the Ferrari. But at the end the pace was good and we managed to bring it home.