 "Explained: Why Mercedes signed teenager Kimi Antonelli as Lewis Hamilton's replacement for 2025 F1 season")
On Saturday, Mercedes announced that Andrea Kimi Antonelli would replace Lewis Hamilton at the team in the 2025 Formula 1 season. Earlier this year, Lewis Hamilton, who has won six F1 drivers’ championships with Mercedes, had announced that he would be leaving Mercedes at the end of the 2024 season and join Ferrari next year.
That took the F1 fraternity by surprise, and not many expected 18 year-old Antonelli to replace Hamilton at Mercedes either. Mercedes took a risk in signing Antonelli, who will team up with George Russell next season.
What was that risk and why did Mercedes sign the teenager?
According to a report on the Formula 1 website, while it was far from obvious on whom Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff would name as Hamilton’s replacement, an idea struck his mind. Mercedes had discovered Antonelli when he was just 11 years old, during his go-karting days.
In 2022, Antonelli had won in the ADAC Formula 4 racing competition and the Italian F4 championships and in 2023, he won the Formula Regional European championship competition.
Mercedes were convinced enough and signed him as a junior driver in 2018. He was still karting back then and allowed him to skip F3 and join PREMA Racing in Formula 2. While Mercedes allowed the Italian to focus on driving in the F2 championships, on the sidelines, he was testing F1 cars as well.
Mercedes initially built him a 2021-spec car before shifting him to the 2022-spec cars, those which are being used in Formula 1 recently.
Mercedes also had other options. They considered bringing in Carlos Sainz, whom Hamilton replaced at Ferrari, but a deal never broke through. Wolff even considered Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, although the Dutch driver has a Red Bull contract till 2028. The Verstappen family, in fact, know Wolff very well and although talks were held during the summer interval, Verstappen decided to stay with Red Bull.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsDespite a difficult start, Antonelli got adapted to F2 where he collected two wins to be placed in sixth in the championships. He even impressed in the F1 tests that were taken privately, and Wolff soon decided to sign the Bologna-born driver for 2025.
However, as recently as on Friday, Antonelli crashed at the first free practice at Monza ahead of the Italian Grand Prix. He was only 10 minutes into his debut weekend in Formula 1 and although he was impressive in the initial laps in terms of speed, he soon lost control while driving through the Parabolica.
Although he may be a little inexperienced, he still has 111 single-seater races to his name. Verstappen only had 47 races, 33 of which came in the European F3 Championships. He finished third in that championship with 10 wins before making his Toro Rosso debut.
Kimi Raikkonen, Antonelli’s namesake, only had 23 races before his F1 debut with Sauber in 2001. It remains to be seen the kind of impact Antonelli can produce at Mercedes, but he is very early in his F1 career and big things can be expected from him.
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