The 19-year-old F1 rookie talks intensity, superstition, and why his IWC Pilot&rsquo;s Watch has become a real good-luck charm.

Just over a year into his Formula 1 career, Kimi Antonelli is still adjusting to what it means to race at the sport&rsquo;s highest level. The 19-year-old from Bologna, freshly named Ambassador of Italian Sport Abroad for San Marino, remembers well the stretch when he secretly knew he&rsquo;d been chosen to fill Lewis Hamilton&rsquo;s seat at Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS. He couldn&rsquo;t confirm a thing, but the rumors were true.
Since then, he&rsquo;s lived through the whole spectrum. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve had highs and lows,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Australia was incredible, finishing fourth in my first F1 race. Then Miami with my first pole. And Canada with the podium.&rdquo; It was the first podium for an Italian driver in sixteen years, and expectations around him keep building. What surprised him most about F1? &ldquo;The intensity. During the race, but also off-track. The events, the commitments, the energy management. I&rsquo;m still trying to get used to all of it.&rdquo;

He&rsquo;s telling this story inside IWC Schaffhausen&rsquo;s Milan boutique, where he appears as the brand&rsquo;s newest ambassador before heading to Monza. Fans are gathered outside. On his wrist is the Pilot&rsquo;s Watch Mark XX Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team, which, after his result in Montreal, has become his lucky piece. &ldquo;The Pilot is light and very clean in its aesthetics. I don&rsquo;t like complicated things. It&rsquo;s the best.&rdquo;
Ask him if he&rsquo;s superstitious and he doesn&rsquo;t hesitate. &ldquo;Yes. Besides the watch, I always use the same gloves and the same shoes, because new ones are stiffer. Obviously not the same race suit. And I fold my clothes the same way every time. The warm-up is always the same too, and I get in the car from the same side, the left.&rdquo; If he had it his way, the diet would be identical too: tortellini and his grandmother&rsquo;s tagliatelle. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s what I miss most when I&rsquo;m abroad.&rdquo;
And the sensations in the car? He laughs a little. &ldquo;The first laps are always a bit traumatic. You&rsquo;re going 300 to 350 km/h and you feel like you&rsquo;re losing the sense of the car. But it&rsquo;s also the best part, the speed, when you feel like you&rsquo;re one with the machine.&rdquo;
He sees a clear link between racing and watchmaking. Passion, performance, precision. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a world I didn&rsquo;t know, and I&rsquo;m getting into it. I like the design of the Pilot&rsquo;s Watch Chronograph 41 TOP GUN Oceana too. Blue is my favorite color. But I want to understand more. I want someone to explain things. I want to visit the manufacture and see how IWC watches are made.&rdquo;

An Interview With Kimi Antonelli on Formula 1, Routine, and His Growing Obsession With IWC

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