Kimi Antonelli faces one of the most daunting tasks in Formula 1 history as he succeeds Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes. Antonelli will become the third-youngest driver on record, only behind Max Verstappen and Lance Stroll.
Hamilton is the most successful driver ever with seven world titles and 105 race wins. Six of those championships and 84 of those victories have come in Mercedes colours, making it the most potent driver-team combination.
Toto Wolff could have signed Carlos Sainz, a proven race-winner who was on the market following Hamilton’s Ferrari move. Wolff also held talks with Fernando Alonso, a two-time world champion.
But Antonelli is seen as the next Verstappen, and Mercedes didn’t want to keep him waiting. Having lost out on the Dutchman in 2014, Wolff was wary of another team poaching his teenage sensation.
Wolff has already downplayed expectations for Antonelli ahead of his debut in Australia. Mercedes know he’s bound to make mistakes in his rookie season.
Antonelli crashed just 10 minutes into his FP1 debut at the Italian GP in August. At 52G, it was one of the biggest accidents of the season.
Lewis Hamilton told Kimi Antonelli how he should treat the Mercedes team
Speaking on the Beyond the Grid podcast, Mercedes race team coordinator Stephen Lord recalled Hamilton becoming ’emotional’ at the Italian GP. As the last of the traditional European races, it was the final event where the team used their roving ‘race base’.
Hamilton had grown accustomed to that facility over his 12 seasons with the squad, and it dawned on him that he’d ‘never’ see it again with his Ferrari move looming. Before he left for good, he wrote a note for successor Antonelli on the walls.
In it, he passed on his best wishes to the youngster and told him the team would reciprocate a ‘caring’ approach. Lord, who’s worked with Hamilton closely since the departure of Angela Cullen, was touched by the gesture.
“In Europe, we have the race base, where we have an engineering suite on the top floor, and at the back of the engineering suite, the drivers have their own rooms,” Lord explained. “Lewis had finished engineering, I think the engineers had left, so Lewis was upstairs in the room on his own.
“Lewis came down the stairs, ready to leave and head home. He got to the bottom of the stairs, and then he stopped, and turned around and went back upstairs.
“He came back down about 10 minutes later and he grabbed a guy that works for the team – Carlos, who’s our head of race team logistics – and you could see that Lewis was really quite emotional. And he said ‘it’s only just occurred to me, I’m never going to see that room ever again’.
“He said ‘I’m really emotional, I can’t leave, I feel sad to walk away from that room because I’ve been in that room for so many years and I’m never going to see it again’. He was really quite touched that he was leaving it behind.
“I walked into the room, and on the wall, there’s quite a long handwritten note, and it was a note to Kimi. It was basically welcoming him to his new room, wishing him the best of luck and saying some really nice things about the team and how if you care for them, they’ll care for you because they’re a great team. And I thought ‘wow, what a nice thing to do’.”
Did Kimi Antonelli prompt Lewis Hamilton to leave Mercedes for Ferrari?
Antonelli has already shown that he has the raw speed to succeed in F1, even without competing in a race. He was rapid in the early moments of Monza practice, though Wolff later reminded him he didn’t need to push so hard on a Friday.
That led to a more cautious approach on his next appearance at the Mexico City GP. His extensive testing programme continued with a run in the post-season Abu Dhabi session on Tuesday, where Antonelli bettered Hamilton’s qualifying time.
If he can stay relatively close to Russell and occasionally beat him, Mercedes will likely view his rookie year as a success. In that respect, Russell’s 19-5 qualifying advantage over Hamilton in 2024 lowers the bar.
Wolff suspects Hamilton was wary of Antonelli’s rise before signing for Ferrari. He knew he could put Mercedes in an awkward position in a couple of years’ time if he didn’t leave voluntarily.
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