Before the 6 Hours of Imola, Antonelli and Gounon swapped their racing suits.

A powerful gesture between two drivers who respect each other. Kimi Antonelli is in Imola this weekend to wave the starting flag for the first round of the World Championship.Endurance (WEC) 2026 — a symbolic role for the 19-year-old Italian, who is only a few kilometers from his hometown of Bologna. He is with Jules Gounon, one of the pilots ofAlpine committed for the season, and also a member of Mercedes Benz-AMG in GT World Challenge and in DTM, that he chose to exchange his wetsuit before the start.

The two men know and respect each other. At the beginning of the year, in the paddock of the 24 Hours of Daytona where he was competing with the Mercedes team, Gounon cited Antonelli as one of the rare exceptions in F1 in terms of involvement and curiosity. "In the world of Formula 1, among the 22 drivers on the starting grid, apart from Max Verstappen And Kimi Antonelli, there probably wasn't a single one of them watching a Creventic race at two in the morning, like the Dubai 24 Hours, and asking me how the high-speed damping was," the Aubenas native confided to AUTOhebdoThis testimony speaks volumes about the reputation Antonelli has built outside of F1 circuits, far beyond his still recent list of achievements. The exchange of racing suits on Sunday morning at Imola thus takes on a particular resonance, between two drivers from different disciplines but driven by the same passion for motorsport.

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