The Formula 1 season has just started, and racing fans are hoping to see amazing overtakes and duels at every corner in all the Grand Prix races this year. This season, there are four top teams competing for the World Drivers' and Constructors' Championship titles: Red Bull, McLaren, Mercedes, and the legendary Ferrari, which has signed Lewis Hamilton this year in hopes of returning to win the championship.

The English driver, who, along with Michael Schumacher, holds the absolute record for seven World Championship titles, left Mercedes after eleven years, and his place has been taken by one of the youngest rookies in history, the Italian Andrea Kimi Antonelli.

Born in Bologna in 2006, Kimi made his debut this year at just 18 years old, finishing the first Grand Prix of the season in Melbourne with a surprising fourth place. Antonelli is named in honor of Kimi Räikkönen, the Finnish World Champion in 2007 with Ferrari, so the young driver was destined for greatness from a young age.

He began his motorsport career in 2015, at just 9 years old, competing in the 60cc category of the Easy Kart Championship. In the following years, he achieved numerous successes in karting, including victories in the WSK Super Master Series in 2017 and the CIK FIA OK European Championship in 2020 and 2021.

These triumphs opened the doors to Italian Formula 4, where, with the Prema team, he won the national title in 2022, replicating the success in the ADAC Formula 4. In 2023, Antonelli continued his rise by winning the Formula Regional Middle East and the Formula Regional European Championship, still with Prema. In 2024, he made his Formula 2 debut, securing two significant victories: the Sprint Race in Silverstone and the Feature Race in Budapest. These results convinced Mercedes, which had included him in the Mercedes Academy in 2018, to bet on him to replace Lewis Hamilton in 2025, pairing him with the experienced British driver George Russell.

Kimi is a truly promising young driver, with a clean and aggressive driving style despite his limited experience, and he has all the characteristics to become a top-tier driver, following in the footsteps of the Italian drivers who have left an indelible mark in the history of Formula 1, representing Italian excellence in motorsport. But among the dozens of Italian drivers who have competed in Formula 1 over the 75 years of the World Championship, who are the strongest?

The first on the list is certainly the Turin-born Nino Farina, who, driving the Alfa Romeo 158, secured the first pole position, the first Grand Prix win, and the first-ever Formula 1 World Championship title in 1950. Farina was, in some ways, the first professional car driver in the history of this sport.

Stronger than him was the Milanese Alberto Ascari, who won the World Championship twice with Ferrari, in 1952 and 1953, famous worldwide for his precise driving and for being one of the first great overall champions of Formula 1.

Two other Italian drivers came very close to winning the World Championship. The first is Riccardo Patrese from Padua (Veneto), who, with 256 Grand Prix starts, holds the record for the most appearances by an Italian driver in Formula 1 history. He secured six career victories and narrowly missed the World Championship in 1992, finishing second. Interestingly, he never raced for Ferrari.

The other is the Milanese Michele Alboreto, who did race for Ferrari and became a flag bearer for the Maranello team. In his career, he won five Formula 1 races and finished second in the World Championship in 1985. Two other Italian drivers had long and important careers in Formula 1.

Roman Giancarlo Fisichella, who competed in 229 Grand Prix, securing three victories and driving for Ferrari in 2009, and Pescara's Jarno Trulli, famous for his incredible qualifying skills for pole position, who raced in 252 Grand Prix and won the Monaco Grand Prix in 2004.

Lastly, we must remember the unfortunate Alex Zanardi, the driver from Bologna who, after five seasons in Formula 1 with few notable results, became a star in Champ Car. In 2001, due to a racing accident, he had both legs amputated but later returned to racing and became a successful paralympic athlete in handcycling until 2020, when a training accident left him in a coma, and he still lives at home under the care of his family.