One picture, a thousand meanings

There is no need for Vroom to explain that to be a Formula 1 driver you have to start from or with karts. We don't even need for anyone to underscore that to emerge in karts you need to have some money, or at least someone willing to invest in talent, even when the prospect of going or being professional is still extremely far away. This, however, is not the umpteenth ode to the world of karting, which we know, can still - and must - promote itself as a world in its own right in the galaxy of Motorsports and not only as a foundry, a nursery or a hothouse of and for Formula1. Because in the group that posed for photographers from around the globe at the presentation of the Mercedes Amg Petronas Formula 1 Team we see something more, and we can't help but notice that there is something beyond the obvious: Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who is something more than just a kart racer who goes fast.

For a land of passion like Italy, which hasn't seen an F1 World Champion since before karting even existed (and yet, alas, it's true: the last World Champion was Alberto Ascari, in 1953), this is not a picture like any or all the others. Because Italy has, indeed, had many kart champions, Italy being universally acknowledged as the homeland of karting, and there have been many, but for one reason or another, none has ever managed to bring home the top prize: to become F1 World Champion.

Italy is the country where karting has its home (even if only because it is here that most of the vehicles that run in every corner of the planet are built), and we ask ourselves, and you, if it seems normal that of the dozens of kart Champions and multiple World Champions that Italy has given to Karting, none of these has ever fulfilled the dream of every child who has ever sat on a go-kart? And we come to the subject of childhood dreams: how many times lately have we reiterated that dreams have no gender and that the time has long come for boys and girls to - and must - give their best on the track without any distinction between boys and girls? And not only in karting, but also to the top of the supply chain, to the epitome of motorsports?

Luna Fluxa, a sweet, fair-haired child amid friends and fellow kart drivers, posing a few centimeters from Lewis Hamilton and George Russell represents something more than just a touch of color. A few months ago, a Karting great like Giancarlo Tinini had his say on the subject, recalling girls from the recent past who had shown what they were made of in karting, but in whom no one had invested with a specific project, as someone did with the young Lewis of yesteryear, here today, posing with these kids. We say: keep this picture somewhere you can see it: the next three or four seasons will prove it was worth it. And if we were indeed not visionaries to see something different.