Andrea Kimi Antonelli recalls sneaking into a F1 race weekend in his younger days, as he talks about using #12 and following Ayrton Senna.
Mercedes’ Antonelli has joined the list of F1 drivers idolising Senna while growing up. Even though the Brazilian was before his time, considering that he grew up at the time of Michael Schumacher, Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton, Sebastian Vettel and even Max Verstappen, he still fancies him.
As he relays, Antonelli bought DVDs of the F1 seasons and watched all of the races of Senna. To the extent, the Italian picked up #12 as his race number as a homage to the Brazilian, who ran the race number while driving for Lotus between 1985 and 1987 seasons.
It is a number that he already used in junior competitions and even took the titles in Italian F4, German F4 and Formula Regional (both in Europe and Middle East). “I always got really passionate when I saw videos of Senna,” said Antonelli.
“Growing up I would watch all the DVDs of the seasons from the 1980s to the 2000s, and in one of them, I remember watching Ayrton and it really stood out. I know I was not lucky enough to watch him race, but when I watched all these videos I started to realise all these incredible races he has done. I watched the documentary and the recent series too.
“He is my idol because of who he was off the track as well as on it. An incredible driver, but a great person too. That inspired me, and to achieve even a little part of what he did in my career would be so cool. It [my race number] is because of Ayrton. It is also the number I first used in single seaters. From F4 I started to use 12 straight away and it worked pretty well with that number.
“Hopefully I can carry that on in F1. ‘Worked pretty well’ is one way of putting it. I was also 12 years old when I joined the Mercedes junior programme, so there is that too,” summed up Antonelli, who happily recalled making it in a F1 paddock in an unusual manner during the German GP in 2014, when his father was racing in Porsche Supercup.
“It was Hockenheim in 2014,” he recalled. “I couldn’t get into the paddock because I was too little. My Dad decided to hide me inside a stack of tyres and wheel me through on a trolley. We put an umbrella on top to make me harder to see! I got through and into the pit lane, and my dad’s friend got me a pass. I had a look around for an hour and it was such a cool experience – but we always laugh at the story of the trolley.”
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