McLaren team principal Andrea Stella asked to reflect on Andrea Kimi Antonelli, his season, and what the victory in Austin means, in the context of the World Championship: "There are many angles to talk about Kimi; first of all, congratulations on the win again, and congratulations to Kimi on what he's been achieving this season. He hasn't finalised yet, but he's now very close. As an Italian, I was talking before with Luca (Colajanni) and like wow, we need to go back to Ascari. The names that have created the inspiration for all of us to see an Italian achieving this level of performance and results in Formula 1, so that's particularly thrilling, I would say, as an Italian person in motorsport. Going more into the technical and specifically this season, Kimi is a very interesting one to look at because he pretty much attacks all the times; you see how often he's just going off track, and you see he's on board, he's pretty aggressive, but at the same time this seems to be not only kind of an aggressive driving, or an attacking driving but effective, and if we think how much we talk in these media sessions about the cars being difficult to drive consistently fast. I think it should be recognised for how much he's been able to, if you want, harness his driving style with what is required of the cars. But at the same time, almost contradicting what I'm saying, when it comes to bringing the result, he's been able to do it. So I think he's the deserving leader of this championship; he's writing an important piece of history for motorsport because I think once he achieves the championship. He will be the youngest, and because, as I said, we need to recall names like Farina and Ascari in terms of Italian motorsport. So, we admire and we can congratulate and certainly, we can only congratulate with him and we hope as McLaren that very soon we are going to give him a fight. We're not going to make his life as easy as it looks at times this season." 📸F1