Martine McCutcheon had one perfect moment, Toto Wolff has had two.
Of course, while the actress turned singer was rarely heard of again following her 1999 hit, the Mercedes boss looks set to be leading the German marque into another era of F1 domination.
“There’s these few moments that are just perfect in Formula 1,” said the Austrian following today’s race, “I had one of them in 2014, and maybe that was now the second one.
“Looking at the podium, Kimi winning his first Grand Prix, doing a one-two with George, whose race was affected, obviously, at the beginning, Lewis third and Bono (Pete Bonington) right in the middle of them… he’s been with Lewis for so many years, and he’s been part of Kimi’s success and growing him and developing him.
“And then these three spraying Champagne on each other on the podium, Lewis having beaten Leclerc, so he’s in a good mood. I mean, this was just great to see.”
Referring to a not so perfect moment, late in the race, when Antonelli made an unforced error and locked-up, causing Wolff to tell Bonington to ‘advise’ Antonelli to take it easy, the Mercedes boss said: “All systems looked well and at the end it was OK, it’s just when Kimi can’t help himself, with another fastest lap and another fastest lap.
“We know the pattern from Monza,” he added, referring to the youngster’s FP1 debut in 2024 when he crashed on his second lap. “So I said to Bono, come on, let’s tell him to calm down. And he said, ‘no, I think he’s in a groove’.
“I said, ‘yeah, he may be in a groove, but we don’t want him to lose this race.’ Then bam, he missed the braking. I said, ‘well, yeah, OK, now you calm down’.”
Of Antonelli’s maiden win, which caused the {i]Sky F1 team – who also appear to think the youngster is now British – to start opining in terms of his championship chances, Wolff said: “I think it’s maybe come earlier than I thought, because we said that it’s going to be a difficult year with many ups and downs and mistakes. And then, bang, second race, and he’s controlled it at the front.
“He’s driven very well today,” he added, “so he’s probably a little bit better than the trajectory that I thought.
“He was actually quite calm and jovial before the race,” he added, “but on the grid, you see the eyes. I think a feature of the champions is the eyes.”
Check out our Sunday gallery from Shanghai here.