Next year, Andrea Chimi Antonelli will make his Formula 1 debut as Mercedes’ lead driver, and apparently everyone will call him not by his first name, but by his middle name – for obvious reasons. In fact, this is already happening before our eyes, for example in the headlines of the Finnish press he already appears as the “Italian Kimi”.
Antonelli himself, however, assures that he was not named in honour of Kimi Raikkonen, the 2007 world champion.
“I am not named after the Finnish racer, this is a common misconception,” Kimi No. 2 said on his social media pages. – This is my middle name, and it wasn’t even my parents who came up with it, but friends of our family. They thought it would go well with both my first and last name.”
However, the aforementioned “family friends” could very well have had Kimi Raikkonen in mind when they shared their idea with the parents of the future Mercedes racer. The boy was born in August 2006, when “Kimi No. 1” was already one of Formula 1’s brightest stars and was preparing to move to Ferrari.
By the way, the two Kimis could very well discuss the issue of names in the Monza paddock. Kimi Raikkonen was invited to the Italian Grand Prix by one of the sponsors of the Sauber team, for which he competed in the last years of his career, and the two drivers can meet in person if they wish.
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
