Kimi Antonelli is on the verge of becoming Formula 1's youngest-ever champion, and the first Italian to win the title since Alberto Ascari in 1953.
For a country full of passionate racing fans, the 73-year wait for an Italian champ is puzzling.
Over decades without a title contender to cheer, Italy's legions of passionate “tifosi” fans have worn red to support Ferrari as a team, rather than individual Italian drivers.
Now the 20-year-old Antonelli, reportedly rejected by Ferrari as a child before joining Mercedes, is changing Italy's racing story.
Ahead of Antonelli almost certainly securing the title Sunday in Mexico City, here why it's taken so long for an Italian to win again.
Italy was the center of the racing world when the World Drivers’ Championship began in 1950.
Just five years after the end of World War II, the fledgling Ferrari brand was one of a clutch of teams in Italian racing red fighting for wins.
Italian Nino Farina won the first title for Alfa Romeo, and Ascari added two more for Ferrari in 1952 and 1953. The decade was dominated by Juan Manuel Fangio, F1’s first superstar driver and an Argentine of Italian heritage, who won five championships in his 40s, a feat never seen since.
Financial issues forced Alfa Romeo, Lancia and Maserati out of F1, leaving Ferrari as the sole Italian constructor by 1960 with fewer opportunities for Italian drivers.
Small British teams, mocked by founder Enzo Ferrari as “garagistas” for being run out of backyards and garages, revolutionized F1 with light and nimble designs with the engine behind the driver. By the late '60s, they were dominant.
There have been other teams based out of Italy — including Racing Bulls today — but Ferrari has remained the country's only genuine title contender.
Until the late 1970s it was rare for a season to pass without at least one Formula 1 driver being killed after crashing in races or tests.
Deaths of Italian auto racing stars — including Ascari, killed testing a Ferrari sportscar in 1955 — caused a backlash in Italy.
The influential Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano issued a blistering condemnation of auto racing after the 1958 death of Italy's Luigi Musso, who was driving for Ferrari.
The newspaper likened auto racing to the ancient Roman god Saturn who “continues to devour his own children,” with Musso as one of the victims of a quest to make money regardless of the human cost.
“It is a matter of morality if we consider that, beyond any pretext of science and progress, there is an immediate, concrete industrial and economic interest in such appalling undertakings — an interest that turns the stopwatch into a means of advertising, even if it is linked to the statistics of the victims,” the newspaper wrote.
When a fiery crash left Ferrari's latest Italian star Lorenzo Bandini with fatal burns in 1967, it was a turning point.
“Enzo Ferrari swore after the death of Bandini that he’d never again hire an Italian driver,” American driver Mario Andretti told a conference in Italy last year.
In the 59 years since, only one Italian has driven a full F1 season for Ferrari. Michele Alboreto raced five years for the team in the mid-1980s, finishing second in the 1985 standings. That was shortly before Enzo Ferrari died aged 90 in 1988.
At the same time, the team let other title contenders pass it by, like six-time race winner Riccardo Patrese. That made it harder for Italians to make the step up to F1, faced with the choice of an uncompetitive local team or taking the risk of moving to Britain at a young age.
The most recent Italian to drive for Ferrari in F1 was Giancarlo Fisichella in 2009, standing in for the injured Felipe Massa, but he spent almost all of his career with teams based in England.
Born to an Italian family in what is now Croatia, Andretti won the title with Lotus in 1978 and drove for Ferrari before that. As an Italian American, hiring him was a loophole in Enzo Ferrari's self-imposed restrictions, Andretti has said.
Three-time champion Ayrton Senna of Brazil, widely considered a contender for F1's greatest-ever talent, had Sicilian heritage. Emerson Fittipaldi, a two-time champ in the 1970s, was another Italian Brazilian.
In the 1990s, France's Jean Alesi — born Giovanni in an Italian family — was a race winner for Ferrari. More recently, Massa from Brazil and the Australians Daniel Ricciardo and Oscar Piastri have been F1 title contenders with Italian heritage.
Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.
See AP’s full auto racing coverage here
FILE - Under the prancing horse symbol of his racing cars, Enzo Ferrari presents the Formula One 312 T3 to reporters on Nov. 12, 1977, in Maranello, Italy. (AP Photo/Trovati, File)
FILE - France's Alain Prost, right, of Team McLaren TAG Porsche, holds his trophy after his victory in the British Grand Prix in Silverstone, England, July 21, 1985. At left is runner-up Michele Alboreto, of Team Ferrari. (AP Photo/HB, File)
FILE - Mercedes driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli, of Italy, celebrates on the podium after winning the Italian Formula One Grand Prix race in Monza, Italy, Sept. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno, File)
Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers union to improve working conditions in the nation's fruit and vegetable fields and coined the phrase “Sí, se puede!” that became a widespread rallying cry, has died. She was 96.
Huerta's family said in a statement through her foundation that she died Wednesday at home.
She kept a busy schedule well into her 90s, marching in protests and speaking in cities across the country about race, poverty, LGBTQ+ and women’s rights on behalf of her Bakersfield, California-based foundation.
Huerta’s resolve cemented her place in history as one of the nation’s most influential labor leaders, civil rights icons and feminist activists. Her three-word Spanish-language slogan — which translates to “Yes, it can be done” — was grounded in the belief that people could affect change.
Her work over the decades earned her a number of accolades, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. When then-President Barack Obama presented the award in 2012, he praised Huerta as a tenacious leader and joked that he had stolen her slogan for his 2008 campaign.
This year, Huerta sent shockwaves through the Latino community when she revealed that she was sexually abused in the 1960s by the farmworker movement’s co-founder, César Chavez, leading to the birth of two children, a secret she kept for 60 years and long after he died.
From the early 1970s on, Huerta’s life partner was Richard Chavez, César’s brother, and together they had four kids. She also had seven children from two earlier marriages.
Huerta said she had kept silent for so long because she feared that coming forward would compromise her life’s work and unravel all the progress made for workers.
When asked during a 2026 interview with the news organization Latino USA about keeping the secret, Huerta said: “It was my personal pain, it was my personal problem and, you know, I think it was worth it because it was my cross to bear. I’ll say it that way.”
Huerta was born Dolores Clara Fernandez in 1930 in Dawson, New Mexico. Her father was a miner and union activist who went on to win a seat in the state Legislature. Her parents divorced when she was 3, and her mother took her and her brothers to California.
Immersed in a melting pot of Mexican, Filipino, African American, Japanese and Chinese working families, Huerta learned from her mother — who owned a restaurant and hotel — about independence, compassion and activism.
Huerta was a young, energetic elementary school teacher in the farm-rich San Joaquin Valley when she decided to answer another calling after growing frustrated by her students’ poor living conditions.
“I couldn’t stand seeing kids come to class hungry and needing shoes,” she said in a 2017 PBS Independent Lens documentary on her life. “I thought I could do more by organizing farmworkers than by trying to teach their hungry children.”
Huerta’s early work with a civil rights group in Stockton resulted in her meeting Chavez. The two wanted to focus more on the plight of farmworkers, so in 1962 they started the National Farm Workers Association, which became United Farm Workers of America a few years later. She was a key leader and negotiator for the union for years.
She was among those who joined Filipino grape pickers on the picket line in what became the five-year “Delano Grape Strike.” With Chavez, she negotiated collective bargaining agreements and contracts with big growers, winning the first health and benefit plans for farmworkers.
Chavez, who died in 1993, once described her as fearless, committed to the cause and tough when it came to negotiations.
She met U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy of Massachusetts during his visit to Delano in 1968 and became a volunteer on his presidential campaign, registering Mexican Americans in California to vote. Huerta was on stage with Kennedy after he won the California primary and he publicly thanked her moments before he was shot.
The assassination devastated Huerta, but she kept organizing for farmworkers’ rights.
Huerta was jailed 22 times for union demonstrating. In 1988, she was seriously injured while protesting Republican presidential candidate George H.W. Bush’s opposition to the UFW grape boycott during his visit to San Francisco.
Caught in a crowd, she was struck by a police officer’s baton, suffered three broken ribs and a pulverized spleen, and required more than a dozen blood transfusions. She reached a settlement with the city to resolve her claims.
After a long recovery, Huerta shifted focus and hit the road to campaign for women’s rights and encourage Latinas to run for office.
She also campaigned for Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton, Obama and Joe Biden. California Gov. Gavin Newsom considered her a close friend.
Emilio Huerta, one of Dolores’ 13 children, once pointed to his mom’s courage during an interview, saying it was one of the most significant drivers of her life’s work.
“To dedicate your life to building a dream of a union for farmworkers, to take on agriculture, which to this today is still a powerhouse. ... That took a lot of guts,” he had said.
Huerta learned the art of lobbying politicians. She secured financial aid for the unemployed and disability insurance for California farmworkers. She spoke out against toxic pesticides, pushed for amnesty for immigrants in the country illegally and fought federal guest worker programs.
By directing nationwide boycotts of grapes and lettuce in the early 1970s, she helped to create the economic pressure and political climate necessary for California to pass what would be the first state law recognizing farmworkers’ right to collective bargaining.
Her work earned her many accolades. She was the first Latina to be inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame and she’s received nine honorary doctorates from U.S. universities.
Schools are named in her honor in California, Texas and Colorado. Her image graces many murals, and streets bear her name, but she didn’t always win favor with more liberal activists.
In 2016 when she endorsed Hillary Clinton instead of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the presidential Democratic primary, actor Rosario Dawson — a Sanders supporter who played Huerta in a 2014 movie about César Chavez — said Huerta had become “an instrument of the establishment.”
Dawson and Huerta eventually reconciled.
Guitarist Carlos Santana later oversaw a documentary based on Huerta’s life after the pair had a late-night conversation about music while in Hawaii. Santana, a Miles Davis fan, discovered Huerta was a huge fan of bebop legend Charlie Parker.
“I even met Charlie Parker. That’s my claim to fame,” Huerta joked during an interview with The Associated Press when she was 87.
It was her work as a leader within the labor movement that reverberated through the U.S. and beyond, making her name synonymous with civil rights. In the 2025 documentary “Seeds of Change: The Life and Legacy of Dolores Huerta,” she recounted her decades-long journey in activism and talked about the inspiration she drew from the women’s movement during the 1970s, saying it provided validation that she too could stand on the stage with other labor leaders.
“I hope that my legacy will be one of an organizer that organized to fight injustice,” she said in the film. “We want to give our children an inheritance of justice, right, not jewels or property or money because they’ll just fight over it. So the main thing to do is to give them this love for justice — and that is the greatest gift I think that any of us can have.”
Associated Press journalist Brian Melley contributed to this report. Former AP journalist Russell Contreras also contributed reporting previously for this story.
FILE - Dolores Huerta, far right, thanks senators after the unanimous vote to designate April 10 as "Dolores Huerta Day," March 18, 2019, in Olympia, Wash. (AP Photo/Rachel La Corte, File)
FILE - Civil rights leader Dolores Huerta speaks during the final day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, July 28, 2016. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)
FILE - United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta looks at a mural of the late Cesar Chavez during a dedication of the Cesar Chavez Monument on the San Jose State University campus in San Jose, Calif., Sept. 4, 2008. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)
FILE - United Farm Workers leader Dolores Huerta, center, leads a rally in San Francisco's Mission District on Nov. 19, 1988, along with Howard Wallace, president of the San Francisco chapter of the UFW, left, and Maria Elena Chavez, 16, the daughter of Cesar Chavez, right, as part of a national boycott of what the UFW claims is the dangerous use of pesticides on table grapes. (AP Photo/Court Mast, File)
FILE - Dolores Huerta, the labor leader, civil rights activist and co-founder of the National Farm Workers Association, is seen at the California Democratic Party's 2025 State Convention at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, Calif., May 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)
