Antonelli in the myth of Ascari, the last Italian triumph in black and white

In a Europe still wounded by the war, at the dawn of Formula 1 in which almost unconscious courage had to be at least equal to talent, Italy was rooting for a driver capable of winning the title of world champion twice in a row, Alberto Ascari.

World champion in 1952 and 1953 at the wheel of the Ferrari 500 F2, historical rival of the legend Juan Manuel Fangio, the Milanese son of art, who tragically died at just 36 years old, has had no heirs until today, when the Bolognese Andrea Kimi Antonelli took up the baton, becoming at just twenty years old the youngest champion ever.

Ascari and Antonelli, protagonists of two eras as distant as geological eras from a competitive and technological point of view. The titles won by the former, for example, were contested over the course of one season with just eight Grands Prix in '52 and nine in '53, seven of which were in Europe. Today we reached 23 appointments.

The Red single-seater of the time developed a power of between 165 and 200 horsepower, depending on the version; the hybrid power unit of Antonelli's Mercedes W17 delivers between 950 and 1,000 horsepower. And no less distant was Italy, characterized by the reconstruction of the post-war period, when the World Cup was a very dangerous and artisanal adventure.

While today simulators, data collection and electronics dominate. From mechanics with grease-stained hands to the white-coated IT engineers of today's Formula 1.

Before choosing the four-wheeler, Ascari had also raced a motorcycle. As would happen to Kimi many years later, 'Ciccio' - so nicknamed due to his chubby face - had inherited the passion for speed from his father Antonio, a pilot in the 1920s.

He held the record for the highest percentage of successes in a season for 71 years: in 1952 he won six of the eight races on the calendar, a record broken only in 2023 by Max Verstappen.

Having emerged practically unscathed from the terrible accident of 1955 when, after skidding on an oil slick, he flew into the waters of the port of the Principality of Monaco, Ascari perished in Monza on 26 May of the same year, going off the road while testing a Ferrari 750 Sport, despite having switched to Lancia in the meantime, after having also competed with Maserati.

He was only 36 years old, the same as his father when he died on a circuit near Paris in 1925, and the site of the accident has since been called the Ascari variant.

Ascari's advantage compared to Kimi is that he achieved his victories at the wheel of the Ferrari, in an era in which the driver had a direct and physical relationship with the limits of the car. Reliability was a central problem, safety conditions were infinitely lower than current ones and the driving experience developed above all on the track.

Antonelli, on the contrary, is the son of a system in which talent is still fundamental but is accompanied and refined by telemetry, athletic training, video analysis and development programs for young drivers in the academies.

However, this does not make his undertaking any less demanding: the tools with which talent is cultivated and measured have changed, the circuits, the cars, the way of experiencing and describing Formula 1 have changed.

The passion for speed remains unchanged. A thread that, 73 years later, unites two Italians who entered the Olympus of motorsport through the main door.