Kardashian sends 'To Kimi from Kim' towel to F1 leader Antonelli after viral Monaco GP moment

Monaco incident

During the podium ceremony at the Monaco Grand Prix, Kim Kardashian, 45, attended the race to support her boyfriend, Ferrari driver Lewis Hamilton. As television images later showed, she passed by a box reserved for the winner's helmet and towel — a fixture introduced in 2020 for pandemic-era social distancing — and picked up the white towel from the number one spot. She wiped her face and sunglasses before walking away with it. The towel belonged to Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli, who had just won his fifth consecutive race, extending his championship lead to 66 points over Hamilton.

Social media latches on

The clip quickly spread across social media, prompting a lighthearted response from Antonelli's team. Mercedes released a video in which the 19-year-old Italian, while washing his hands, turned to the camera and asked: "Hey, have you seen my towel?" A follow-up post from Thursday's media day showed him still searching. By the time of the official FIA press conference on Thursday, the joke had reached the paddock. When a reporter asked Antonelli if he had recovered the towel, he replied with a deadpan:

“No, still looking for it.”

Hamilton caught off guard

Lewis Hamilton, however, was completely oblivious to the saga. When journalists brought up the incident during his own Thursday press conference, the seven-time champion initially asked "His towel?" and confessed he had no knowledge of it.

“I don't know about it at all.”

The Kardashian-Hamilton relationship, which became Instagram official earlier this month, has been generating headlines since the couple was spotted together at events like the Super Bowl and Coachella in recent months.

Resolution in Barcelona

The narrative reached a cheerful conclusion on Friday during second practice for the Spanish Grand Prix at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. As Antonelli climbed out of his car, a Mercedes team member presented him with a white towel wrapped in a gift ribbon. Embroidered in black thread were the words "To Kimi from Kim." Antonelli, still playing along by asking "Where is my towel?" on camera, draped it around his neck and said

“Thank you Kim!”

He later asked a crew member if the towel was genuinely from Kardashian and was assured:

“It is actually from her!”

The episode, which brought together the worlds of reality television and top-tier motorsport, gave the Formula One paddock a moment of levity ahead of the race, where Antonelli will chase a sixth straight win.