Patrizia Ascari claims Ferrari will never win again.
Patrizia Ascari, daughter of Alberto Ascari, has welcomed Kimi Antonelli’s world championship with open delight, while delivering a bleak verdict on Ferrari’s title prospects. Speaking to il Giornale, she described the Mercedes driver in warm terms and said she could not imagine who would dislike him. Antonelli secured the 2026 Drivers’ Championship on 1 November, becoming Formula 1’s youngest-ever champion at the age of 20 and the first Italian to win the title since her father in 1953.
Kimi Antonelli’s World Championship Through an Italian Lens
The wait for a new Italian champion lasted 73 years, a span that has made the milestone resonate far beyond the paddock. Antonelli, born in Bologna, had already signalled his standing earlier in the season when he took pole position at Silverstone, the first by an Italian driver at the British Grand Prix since Alberto Ascari in 1953. Ascari’s daughter, however, focuses less on statistics and more on the personality of the new champion. In her words, as reported in the interview, Antonelli is likeable, friendly, young and smiling, and she called him magnificent.
Antonelli’s championship ends an Italian drought that began after Ascari’s second title and spans more than seven decades. For Italian motorsport, the result returns an Italian name to the list of world champions for the first time since 1953. The achievement is particularly notable given his age: at 20, he is the youngest driver ever to win the Formula 1 drivers’ title.
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One element of the public narrative leaves her unmoved. Il Giornale asked about the symbolic passing of the baton between Ascari and Antonelli, recalling Kimi’s overtake at the corner dedicated to her father during the Italian Grand Prix. She answered that such stories are the fairy tales one can tell. The response is revealing: while the sport and its audience seek poetic continuity between generations, she prefers to judge the present champion on his own qualities.
Alberto Ascari’s Legacy and a Family Shaped by Loss
Alberto Ascari won the Formula 1 world championship with Ferrari in 1952 and 1953. He was the last Italian champion until Antonelli, and he remains the only Italian to have won the title in a Ferrari. He died at Monza on 26 May 1955. Patrizia was eight years old at the time. Today she lives in the countryside near Lucca, surrounded by her dogs and her memories. Her reflections therefore come from lived family history rather than from distant analysis.
Asked whether she inherited anything from her father, Patrizia Ascari said she is fairly superstitious, although about different things; black cats, for example, are something she likes very much. The answer is a small but telling detail. It presents a woman who engages with her father’s celebrated name lightly and with humour, rather than treating every question as a matter of motorsport mythology.
Why Enzo Ferrari Was Never a Family Friend
The interview also addresses the relationship between the Ascari family and the founder of Ferrari. Il Giornale’s headline for the conversation states plainly that Enzo Ferrari was not a friend, a framing that challenges the romantic image often attached to the partnership between driver and team. Ascari’s two titles with the Scuderia remain a cornerstone of Ferrari’s history, yet the personal distance highlighted in the headline is a reminder that sporting success and personal closeness are not always the same.
Ferrari’s Future and Lewis Hamilton’s Difficult Move
Ascari’s most striking comments concern Ferrari’s modern era. In the interview, she expressed sympathy for Lewis Hamilton, the seven-time world champion, over his move to Maranello, which she regarded as having ended sadly, and predicted that Ferrari will never win again. Those remarks should be read as the opinion of Alberto Ascari’s daughter, not as a forecast based on technical analysis. Even so, they land at a sensitive moment, with an Italian champion crowned in a Mercedes rather than in the red car that carried her father to glory.
Hamilton’s presence at Ferrari adds another layer. He arrived as a seven-time champion at a team whose last Drivers’ title came in 2007, and expectations around the partnership were immense. Her remarks therefore touch on one of the sport’s most discussed storylines.
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Context helps readers weigh these comments. Predictions about a team’s future are inherently uncertain, because the competitive order in Formula 1 has shifted repeatedly across its history, and a declaration that Ferrari will never win again is an emotional judgement rather than an established fact. Antonelli’s success with Mercedes, meanwhile, shows that Italian talent can reach the summit of the sport outside Maranello, which gives the interview much of its narrative force.
This report draws on the interview published by il Giornale, the primary source, and on the newspaper’s separate reporting on Antonelli’s Silverstone pole position. Quotations have been translated from Italian into English, and remarks on Ferrari and Hamilton are attributed to the same interview. Opinions expressed belong to Patrizia Ascari and are presented as reported, not endorsed.
Taken together, the interview presents two clear messages. The first is a generous welcome for Antonelli, whom Patrizia Ascari sees as a young, smiling champion worthy of affection. The second is a sceptical view of Ferrari’s prospects, expressed by someone whose family name is inseparable from the team’s history. Both messages arrive at a moment of national celebration, 73 years after her father’s second title. Whether her prediction about Ferrari proves correct will be settled on the track, but her affection for Antonelli is unmistakable, and her voice adds a rare and deeply personal dimension to one of Italian motorsport’s defining moments.