Last summer, just before Kimi Antonelli was announced as Lewis Hamilton’s replacement at Mercedes, a video of the Italian teenager went viral on social media. Reposted by thousands, it gave a sparkling insight into the driver tipped to be the next big thing in Formula One.
In conversation with his engineers at the Formula Two team Prema, Antonelli is asked to recall a host of qualifying lap times from his past few years of racing. This, those present stated, was Antonelli’s biggest talent; not his lightning speed behind the wheel but his meticulous motorsport memory bank. Lo and behold, Antonelli reeled off an array of lap times with precise accuracy. His F2 teammate Ollie Bearman, now at Haas, could only watch on and laugh in disbelief.
It is a fascinating insight into Antonelli, the 18-year-old hotshot on whom the Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has risked his post-Hamilton legacy. A teenager whose mental fortitude is perhaps more impressive than his undoubted raw pace in a racing car. So far, six races in, Wolff’s gamble, replacing one of the greatest of all time with an untried rookie, looks like a masterstroke.
Antonelli has already broken records: the youngest driver to score points, after a sumptuous recovery drive from 16th to fourth in the rain in the season opener in Melbourne. And after his surprise pole position for the sprint race at the last round in Miami, he became the youngest driver to record a pole position in any F1 format. At 21, Sebastian Vettel, the previous record holder, was three years older.
Released with exquisite timing, one day after the Miami Grand Prix, Antonelli’s ascension to F1 has been chronicled in a new 45-minute documentary on Netflix, titled The Seat.
Made in partnership with Mercedes sponsor WhatsApp, it gives a quick-fire behind-the-scenes glance at Wolff’s reaction to Hamilton’s exit and how Antonelli – ahead of the likes of Carlos Sainz and Max Verstappen – sprinted to the front of Wolff’s thinking on how to fill the spot next to George Russell this season.
Since signing for Mercedes at the age of 12, the boy from Bologna has been hailed as a prodigy. Archival footage in the documentary shows Antonelli, whose father Marco also raced domestically, romping to victory in the top tier of go-karting in 2018, aged just 12. Having won Freca – the de facto European Formula Four championship – in 2023, he skipped Formula Three last year and jumped straight to Formula Two, finishing sixth and winning two races.
But as The Seat highlights, his most valuable time on track last year came when he was testing previous Mercedes F1 cars at venues such as Silverstone, Austria and Jerez. With Hamilton’s ex-engineer Peter “Bono” Bonnington the guide in his ear, Antonelli was given 5,600 miles (roughly 30 full F1 races) to prepare for the biggest challenge of his life. All this before he’d even passed his road driving test in Italy, which he ticked off in January.
Given Liam Lawson’s rapid two-race demotion at Red Bull, these stats have not been lost on experts pointing out how valuable Mercedes’s thorough planning has been in helping Antonelli adjust to the F1 circus.
There has, we should not forget, been one hiccup. His F1 debut at Monza last September, one day before official confirmation of his 2025 pick, ended after just 10 minutes in practice. On his first lap, he set the timing sheets alight. At the end of his second flying lap, he spun and smashed the car into the wall at Parabolica corner.
“That day, I let down my whole family,” Antonelli said in The Seat. “My dad was not happy with me. I cried as well, just didn’t want to see anyone. Just wanted to go home.”
It was an unforgiving lesson on the fine margins between risk and reward in F1.
This weekend, Antonelli returns home to Italy’s other stop on the calendar. After a whistlestop six-race opening to the 2025 season, covering three continents, F1 starts its traditional European summer season at Imola for what is likely to be the last race at this old-school circuit in Emilia-Romagna.
Yet while the majority of spectators will be donning the scarlet red of Ferrari, they will be in the unusual position of having a local star to support too. Antonelli is the first Italian F1 driver since Antonio Giovanazzi departed in 2021. More astonishingly, no Italian driver has won an F1 race since Giancarlo Fisichella in 2006.
Antonelli’s opening stint – five top-10 finishes from six grands prix, sixth in the world championship ahead of Ferrari’s Hamilton – has impressed onlookers in the paddock. His charming post-race interviews, conducted in both his native Italian and excellent English, have also endeared him to the sport’s faithful.
Wrapped in black and silver overalls, the future looks bright. Mercedes technical director James Allison spoke for the whole team in The Seat when he described Antonelli as “precious and special”.
What would represent a successful rookie campaign for Antonelli? No championship standing goals; simply keeping in touch with Russell, in his fourth year at Mercedes, round by round. Wolff has already insisted it is a year for learning, as Antonelli lays the groundwork for what is tipped to be a long and successful career.
But Miami, a circuit he had never driven at before, gave a tantalising teaser as to Antonelli’s potential. His pole-setting lap was stunning; his drop from first to fourth after turn one in the subsequent sprint a sign that racecraft can only come with experience. Yet Antonelli is wise beyond his years, and, some might say, this decade’s answer to Verstappen in the 2010s. The comparisons, given their rapid teenage debuts, are obvious. Wolff has also made no secret of his regret at not signing the Dutch star as a teenager, when Red Bull beat him to the punch.
Whether Antonelli can fulfil his potential as Verstappen has in recent years is another question. At this early stage, Mercedes are rumoured to be the frontrunners for 2026, amid new engine and chassis regulations. Could Antonelli really be a title contender next year? Vettel is the youngest F1 title winner, having taken the championship at 23; Antonelli has until 2029 to better that.
Yet at this stage, talk of world championships is far-fetched. A podium will be Antonelli’s first target, and what better place to do it than Imola, 25 miles from home, this weekend. But no matter what lies ahead on the journey, at least we know the numerical whizz himself will be on top of all his statistics along the way.
