RacingKimi Antonelli went back-to-back. The Mercedes rookie followed his maiden Formula 1 victory in China with another win in Japan, racing alongside teammate George Russell and snapping Italy’s long wait for a race winner since Giancarlo Fisichella. He also became the first Italian since Alberto Ascari in the early 1950s to take a second Grand Prix immediately after his first.
That pattern is rare. Few drivers convert a breakthrough into a second win straight away. Antonelli just joined that short list and put an Italian name on it for the first time in generations.
History points to Ascari as the benchmark. According to the historical recap, he took his first two wins in 1951 in consecutive starts: first at the Nürburgring in Germany, then at Monza with Ferrari’s 375 F1, where he beat Juan Manuel Fangio. Those early signs grew into dominance. Ascari reeled off nine straight wins across 1952 and 1953, a streak that stood as the outright record until Max Verstappen pushed it to ten in 2023.
The modern era has only a few examples. As the article’s account outlines, Lewis Hamilton did it as a McLaren rookie in 2007. He claimed his first win in Canada from pole in a Safety Car-heavy race, then won again the very next week at Indianapolis, also from pole, after holding off Fernando Alonso in what turned out to be F1’s last race at the Brickyard.
Charles Leclerc’s first two victories also arrived one after the other in 2019. He broke through at Spa-Francorchamps the day after his friend Anthoine Hubert died in a Formula 2 accident, then won at Monza to end Ferrari’s nine-year home drought, as detailed in the piece. Different eras, different cars, the same immediate double.
There is an instructive near-miss too. In early 2003, Kimi Räikkönen won his first Grand Prix in Malaysia, then appeared to have made it two in a row in Brazil when a red flag froze the order. Five days later, following a Jordan appeal, officials corrected a timing error and awarded the race to Fisichella. The article notes that meant Räikkönen’s first two wins were not consecutive, and he had to wait until the 2004 Belgian Grand Prix for his next victory.
Set against that backdrop, Antonelli’s sequence in China and Japan stands out. He delivered under pressure twice in a row, moved Italy back onto the winners’ list for the first time since Fisichella, and matched a feat Ascari laid down at the dawn of the championship. The select club he just joined spans seven decades. It did not add a new Italian name until now.