Andrea Kimi Antonelli has admitted it would be “very scary” if Max Verstappen was properly in Formula 1 title contention following dominant back-to-back victories for the Red Bull driver.
Verstappen followed up a convincing first win of the season at the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia by completing a clean sweep across the Singapore weekend.
The four-time world champion took pole for both the sprint race and grand prix and converted each into victories in dominant fashion on his way to picking up maximum points.
Verstappen's recent momentum has seen him move up to fourth place in the world championship, but he is 119 points behind Antonelli and is too far back to mount a title fightback, unlike last year.
Antonelli finished third as Verstappen won in Singapore
When asked by Sky Sports F1 if he is glad Verstappen was so far back in the points standings, Antonelli, who can clinch his first world title at the next race, laughed.
“Yeah, because it would be very scary,” Antonelli responded. “It would be very, very scary.”
To become F1’s youngest-ever world champion at the United States Grand Prix, the 20-year-old Italian would need to win the race with Mercedes team-mate George Russell finishing ninth or lower and Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton fifth or lower.
"All in all I feel like we are doing a great job. At the end, you look at the season, and we have always been there,” Antonelli added.
"Obviously we have had a great car and now we are trying to understand this new package. I'm very proud of the team this weekend because we pushed through the difficulties and started to see life at the end of the tunnel. It's just a matter of time.
"Now we go to Austin, a normal weekend, where we can hopefully do a lot of changes and understand the package more.”
Despite Antonelli looking unstoppable in his title charge, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff is keeping his feet on the ground.
"You look at the numbers and ask the probability of him winning, and it's probably almost 100 per cent. But it's motor racing, you can break down, you can have accidents, and then things could start to stress," he told Sky Sports F1.
"So, I think we need to look at it race by race, make sure that we are continuing to score the points, and eventually hopefully it's going to come towards him.”
Meanwhile, Verstappen is not thinking about the championship. The Dutchman simply wants to “have a bit more fun” in the remaining six races.
"I think the last few races have been really positive for us," Verstappen said. "It's just great to see and yeah, we have a lot of motivation in the team to try and deliver even more results.
“It's a really good group of people. I really enjoy working with them and hopefully we can have a bit more fun until the end of the year."
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