Six reasons Mercedes chose Kimi Antonelli to replace Lewis Hamilton in F1

Looking beyond speculation and hype Mercedes has picked a rookie to replace leis Hamilton in its F1 team next season and he's already crashed big time on his public debut we've had an immediate demonstration of the risk and reward that comes with Mercedes making Kimmy Antonelli the successor to f1's most decorated driver in 2025 it's not every day you get to see a potential F1 meast Stars public debut but that's precisely what we got at the Italian Grand Prix where Antonelli drove his 2025 teammate George Russell's car in Friday practice and crashed heavily the very next day Mercedes announced Antonelli would race for the team next season it was quite the roller coaster 24 hours for the 18-year-old Italian given how much has been written said or youtubed about Antonelli since February when the Hamilton Ferrari move was announced you might feel quite familiar with him already but the reality is he's had a simultaneously prominent and peripheral existence until now as far as F1 goes Antonelli's either been talked about a lot or done a lot behind closed doors in his private 2022 car testing program it's inevitably left a lot of people wondering what the fuss is all about and that's probably been Amplified by such a high-profile and dramatic mistake on his gr Prix weekend debut so looking Beyond just speculation and hype here are six reasons Mercedes has picked Antonelli to replace Mercedes will accept mistakes Hamilton Antonelli's hotly anticipated fp1 started with him briefly sitting at top the times and ended dramatically with a heavily damaged Mercedes in the wall and just five laps to his name clearly it changed nothing for Mercedes team principal Toto wolf said an fp1 that's gone wrong is no reason to decide against a driver and that's because the team is well aware of the risks involved here Mercedes knows that mishaps like this will not just be possible along the journey with an exciting capable but still raw talent they are likely it would be easy to Advocate a careful approach for antelli but how much restraint can you ask of a driver on such a steep learning curve how beneficial can driving at a reduced percentage really be in his situation and can you really ask him to be conservative when Mercedes is taking an overtly aggressive approach to his career progression it is a fine line to balance and so long as it doesn't get stupidly Reckless or destroy his confidence he can always reain it in Wolf says he'd rather slow somebody down the make somebody fast because he knows that the second thing is impossible and that there will be a lot of highlights along the way and right now these opportunities matter more than normal because Antonelli's got a lot to learn in a short space of time there are limited chances for him to add to his data bank before 2025 and fp1 Tings aren't box ticking exercises where he's concerned they are real world live on track training sessions that's doesn't excuse such a big early crash and he will need to exhibit better judgment and more restraint in the future but Mercedes is at least conscious of the reality it's embracing Antonelli CV is already Searing speed stacked a two-time European carting Champion by 15 four single cat championships in two seasons and a two-time Formula 2 race winner as a 17-year-old rookie despite his Premier team struggles the kid's good well obviously but how good Mercedes rates him as the next Max for STA and so SE SE him as the leading driver of his generation that alone is why he seemed destined to be in a Mercedes F1 car sooner or later we always follow interestes in debutants closely and the plan for Monza was to stay glued to anon's progress with myself following his onboards and Ed straw dispatched Trackside why because this was a great chance to understand his driving style properly for the first time draw the first even semi-relevant public comparisons of his Pace to actual F1 drivers and simply see how he handles being in F1 for real obviously that ended up being shortlived and that counts against Antonelli but wolf delighted in pointing out that what we saw in one and a half laps is astonishing and while that is a bit of hyperbole it's rooted in some truth Antonelli definitely caught the eye in a good way before he captured everybody's attention in a bad one we saw a confident well-prepared 18-year-old with bags of ability and a huge upside going quickest with his very first flyer was a fun footnote but the fact he managed such a competent run immediately reflected both his speed and his extensive work test 2021 F1 Machinery in private positions are so irrelevant that early in practice that it was actually how Antonelli was immediately comfortable attacking the breaking zones and hustling the car into the corner that stood out but obviously his enthusiasm rapidly proved his undoing and pushing that hard that early on is probably why he was so much faster than other drivers coming to the end of a second flying lap that was about to reestablish Antonelli at the head of the order he did what teams dread most of young drivers got over ambitious and had a sudden loss of control and a helpless trip across the gravel into into the wall hard with a 52g impact wolf often talks about throwing Not ready... but he will be Antonelli into cold water which basically means let him confront the shock of a sudden F1 debut and deal with it Antonelli won't be perfect in 2025 but Mercedes doesn't expect him to be it expects him to learn quickly to build confidence and sooner rather than later to show he deserves such a good seat in F1 the fp1 crash will actually be a step on that path not a knock backwards don't crash is often what teams impress upon rookie and a shunt like this on his second flying lap is utterly unnecessary and was definitely driver error it had the Hallmarks of taking in a little too much speed with tires that couldn't keep up at the end of the lap after the highspeed of scari chicane which Antonelli had also attacked harder than other drivers especially on a hot day and a new track surface that's radiating heat slightly more than would be normal and a look at some primitive data backs up that this was just a perfect storm of Antonelli getting carried away having been so committed on this lap already which featured personal best sectors and was again about to make in P1 on the leaderboard Antonelli stayed on the throttle and break around 30 m later into parabolica than on his first attempt it was so much later in fact that it looks like he actually breaks slightly later than Hamilton eventually did for his outright fastest lap in the entire session and Antonelli's speed on Entry was probably around 30 km per hour higher than on his first flying lap wolf said simply that what he tried to do the car can't take antonell is unlikely to make that mistake again and that's probably why it seems so easy to shrug it off he's too good and too switched on not to learn from this he'll discover what he got wrong and why learn something new about tires he's never driven before because his 2022 testing has been done with a different compound range and absorb how he needs to react next time the car does something he does not expect it will form part of a rapidly growing skill set and knowledge bank that Mercedes needs him to build anelli will not be the same driver by the start of 2025 as the one who crashed so badly at Monza will he be ready from the first race in 2025 at his best probably but not completely he will still have to learn a lot on the job by promoting Antonelli to F1 with No repeat of Russell mistake its own team Mercedes guarantees control of his development and gives its prote the same chance McLaren gave Hamilton back in 2007 a debut in a front running car it's a big show of faith that usually only comes through close affiliations like Hamilton had with McLaren while Antonelli's Ascension through the single seat of ranks has been rapid he's already been part of the Mercedes young driver program for six seasons now along the way Mercedes has watched this guy super closely from his prodigious carting success to his first steps into single seaters his graduation to F2 and now his F1 work as Antonelli gets to the hardest part of that Ascent Mercedes has a rare chance to keep guiding him up close rather than Palm his refinement off on someone else Al loone elsewhere is perfectly valid and there are loads of examples of it working very well especially on a short-term basis just look at Max foren spending a year and a bit at Tor Roso before going to Red Bull and charlot clar's one-year salber apprenticeship before his Ferrari move but Mercedes learned from Russell's 3-year Williams apprenticeship that very good drivers don't need to spend too much time on loan somewhere else Russell's third season at that lower Midfield team was unnecessary something he and Mercedes have both admitted but that was the deal Mercedes made with Williams and it had to honor that Mercedes doesn't want to repeat the mistake with Antonelli and it could have if it signed Carlos signs for example and sent Antonelli out to Williams Mercedes would be entrusting another team with his progress banking on him to improve enough without having 100% over sight of the circumstances and potentially leave itself open to a change in circumstances complicating when or how or if he could be brought into the work team in the future the easiest way to avoid all of that is to take advantage of this opportunity and keep nurturing him from The Hamilton/Verstappen factors within without Hamilton moving to Ferrari Mercedes obviously wouldn't have had the chance to facilitate this instant move for Antonelli Antonelli's emergence was actually a key reason Hamilton had a OnePlus One Mercedes contract with the option of on his side in the first place because Mercedes felt it had good insurance it softens the blow of losing a driver of Hamilton's caliber if you have someone like Antonelli available it also helps if you were thinking about how quickly you could get antelli into F1 anyway Mercedes didn't want the door to be closed to such a promising youngster too far in the future which is why Hamilton and Russell only had deals to the end of 2025 Mercedes wouldn't have been able to dump either driver to make room for Antonelli next year and for 2026 it would have been difficult even if it was tempting this is the team that wouldn't drop V botas for Russell for 2021 after all so it has proven to be quite conservative when it has a driver Dynamic that's working well and turfing out Hamilton for a rookie is an order of magnitude Boulder than dropping botas Antonelli's potential would have made Mercedes think seriously about a change especially given Hamilton's age and salary but thinking about it and doing it are very different things so Hamilton has made Mercedes life a lot easier so two has the lack of other Mega Alternatives as it's also the case that were a staffen willing and able to jump Mercedes would have signed him over Antonelli that has obviously had a huge bearing on the outcome SS was the number one alternative candidate and no disrespect to him Mercedes only ever viewed him as a stop Gap if Russell's as good as Mercedes thinks signs would not have displaced him and Antonelli would be ready eventually so even if SS was a better short-term punt that's probably all he would turn out to be and Mercedes only seemed interested in moving away from a long-term play for an out andout Superstar Antonelli stepping into F2 at How he's dealing with pressure 17 skipping F3 was the most ambitious Career Development move any highly rated proe has made since ven went from carts into proper F3 and then straight into F1 a year later and when Antonelli's F2 season began and prer was in all sorts of bother that piled on the pressure further the results to justify all the hype were very hard to come by Antonelli has dealt with that tricky situation well though he's refining his racecraft and his development in a tough championship and suboptimal circumstances but handling it better than than his teammate olle bman another highly rated youngster Bound for the 2025 F1 grid with h on top of that Mercedes has thrown Antonelli into a very ambitious F1 testing program across four circuits for multiple days at a time he's racked up good mileage in 2022 machinery and now he stepped into the 2024 car at Monza his home Grand Prix where there's more attention hype and expectation than he'll have experienced in his entire career through all of this Mercedes has been very impressed by his speed consistency and approach and even with that fp1 crash at Monza Mercedes has still come to the conclusion that he is a world champion caliber driver who will not just be ready for its F1 team one day he can cope with the challenges now antonel has not shown anything but good mental resilience so far even at Monza he picked himself up from his crash got back in his F2 car and qualified sixth beating bman yet again the only consequences were fairly minor as he did sight a little dizziness at the end of the day and skipped a pre-arranged F1 media session as a result a Mercedes race seat will bring new levels of attention and scrutiny wolf was already pondering whether the crash in Monza was a result of too many things piling on top of Antonelli who he admitted must have had a heavy burden at the weekend but really Antonelli didn't seem over AED by the occasion at all his mistake looked like youthful exuberance and overconfidence rather than struggling with the weight of expectation and ultimately if Mercedes doubted Antonelli can handle the pressure it wouldn't be given him any race seat let alone the one being vacated by Hamilton