Why Antonelli’s boss has to match his maturity in realising his F1 dream

Photo: F1

Andrea Kimi Antonelli is close to becoming an F1 driver, realising a long-held ambition of Mercedes chief Toto Wolff. So far, it feels as though the 18-year-old has been handling the excitement best

Having spent more than a decade as team principal of not just one of the most successful teams in Formula 1 history, but in all of sport, Toto Wolff knows how to handle the media. He also knows how to handle not only one of the most talented racing drivers of all time, but one of the most marketable individual athletes in all of sport. The reach of Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes goes beyond Formula 1, and the same can be said of their rivals – or archnemeses – Max Verstappen and Red Bull.

Given Hamilton alone has delivered Wolff’s team 85 grand prix victories and six world championship titles since 2013, including winning two of the last four races, there should never have been a point where Wolff has looked at his driver line-up, looked at those of the opposition and felt envy. But the fact is that he has wanted Verstappen’s services for a long time, and it was Red Bull who was able to secure those – and retain them – by signing the Dutchman to its driver development programme as a teenager then rapidly bringing him up into one of its F1 teams. The outcome of that, in the same time period of Hamilton’s success with Mercedes, has been 61 grand prix wins and three titles.

There was a lot of interest from F1’s driver development programmes in Verstappen as he switched from karts to cars, but Red Bull’s was the only one that could guarantee him an F1 seat, and therefore claim his signature. Mercedes had the weakest hand on any F1 team as, although it had been supporting young drivers for many years, its academy was just being launched in its current form at the point where Red Bull was already running private tests in single-seaters with Verstappen.

For a long time, the idea of F1 driver development programmes (usually branded as junior teams or academies) was synonymous with Red Bull. But the inefficiency of its output and decision-taking after Verstappen, and the rise of rival programmes, means that is no longer the case. In fact, Mercedes has set a great example for what a well-run junior team looks like, despite only having three drivers graduate to F1. Later this week confirmation is expected that it will become four in 2025, as Mercedes has chosen its junior Andrea Kimi Antonelli as the replacement for Ferrari-bound Hamilton.

Photo: LAT Images / Mercedes-AMG

Few in the business will argue against his assertion that Antonelli is F1-ready, but Wolff’s drive to have his own answer to Verstappen – since even today he can’t attract the Dutchman’s talents to his team – has risked exactly the thing that gave Mercedes’ driver development programme a claim at being the best.

Antonelli was driving for the karting team of Nico Rosberg, who was 2016 F1 world champion with Mercedes, when he got signed as a junior aged 11 in early 2018. At the time he was still in mini karting, a level below where many scout for possible generational talents, and contracting him that early was a clear sign of intent. It denied Mercedes’ rivals from snapping him up at a later point, and also would, so long as he lived up to expectations, at one point deny the team’s other juniors their chance at racing in F1. But that was a problem nobody needed to think about until Antonelli reached F1’s support paddock.

That happened this year, and the now-17-year-old’s arrival in F2 came at a price. Mercedes had two juniors ready to race in the second tier of single-seaters, but was only going to support one. Paul Aron had come third in the FIA Formula 3 Championship in 2023, and Antonelli had been champion of Europe and the Middle East a rung below him in Formula Regional.

Aron had spent three years in FRegional, all under Mercedes’ protective wing, and come third in the European championship twice. Having achieved the same championship position in his rookie F3 campaign, he did not want to lose momentum by spending more time in the category.

Since he raced for F3’s top team Prema, a step up to F2 for 2024 would have freed up his old seat for Antonelli. And since Mercedes’ other junior Frederik Vesti was leaving F2 after becoming championship runner-up (in his second season) with Prema, there was a clear conveyer belt of existing relationships that could have been utilised for the good of each of its rising stars.

But the three-pointed star had already planned to put Antonelli in Prema’s F2 line-up, and was unwilling to support Aron’s own ambitions to graduate from F3. By the time he made his F2 debut in the 2023 season finale, Aron knew he would need to look beyond keeping his place in Mercedes’ ranks to make a full-time step-up possible.

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

A day after his debut weekend concluded he confirmed his exit (after two years and four months holding junior status), and three days on secured his seat on the 2024 F2 grid with Hitech GP. That has proven to be an inspired choice, since Hitech has done a far better job of getting to terms with F2’s new car and Aron is firmly in contention to become champion as a rookie. Antonelli has won two races, but sits seventh in the standings.

Gwen Lagrue, who runs Mercedes’ junior team, uncovered Aron and Antonelli in karting and together with Wolff masterminded its patience-led approach, which has traditionally afforded time to its drivers to grow rather than promote them up the ladder too soon and then drop them when they don’t meet expectations. He once stressed in an interview with Formula Scout the importance of loyalty that drivers have to show to organisations to earn opportunities.

Speaking in the context of Oscar Piastri’s defection from Alpine to McLaren, he said: “I don’t know how other young driver programmes are organised, contractually talking, [but] I know what we have with our drivers and to me there is a legal part of it, which is clear to us, but what is clear as well is when you have a chance to be linked to a big organisation, it could be us or any other F1 programme, there is a certain loyalty you need to have.”

Aron could have stayed loyal to Mercedes, but would most likely have remained in F3 and not been able to have such a standout 2024, which has also included the opportunity to race in Formula E. Then you have Vesti, who has held on to his Mercedes links for a fourth year by becoming the team’s reserve driver but at this weekend’s Italian Grand Prix will be watching Antonelli drive in practice rather than get to be in the Mercedes-AMG F1 W15 himself. Not only is he being denied a deserved opportunity to be on track in an F1 car, but that lack of track time also prevents him from correlating the simulator work that is part of his duties. By then it will likely already be announced that Antonelli has jumped him in the queue for a race seat too.

At the end of the day, and thankfully for all directly involved, Antonelli has adapted incredibly well to the on and off-track requirements of F2. Had he not, then it would have highlighted the error Mercedes made by overlooking its usual patience-led approach. At the moment the consequences have only been felt by the team’s other long-time proteges, but should the next step up to F1 prove too much, too fast for Antonelli then he will feel it too. And that’s not fair on him. There is the risk that, if the gamble doesn’t work out, Mercedes could potentially have mishandled three very impressive talents – the sort of thing Red Bull has been guilty of before.

Photo: Prema

Halfway through the F2 season, at a point when Antonelli was yet to make the podium but was way ahead of team-mate and fellow F1-bound talent Ollie Bearman in the standings, Wolff was asked if he had concerns about Antonelli’s readiness.

“The season has been a bit tricky because overall the two [Prema drivers] have not been on a level and I think the team recognises that,” he replied.

“[Antonelli] is being talked a lot about. His junior formula and go-karting track record is one of a kind. And that’s clear that the pressure ramps up. But it’s like his father says, a champion needs to be thrown in the cold water and needs to swim. So they are very clear about that.”

He added: “I don’t think that the pressure harms at all the way he performs in the car and how he drives. You can clearly see it’s a good benchmarking with Ollie Bearman. They are pretty close. Ollie had a very good race in Austria and Kimi on the Sunday, had a clutch release issue in the second race. So you’ve got to swim. That’s clear. It was a rapid career progression. He’s 17. Hasn’t got even a driving license for a road car. And the best ones will be able to cope with that, with the amount of scrutiny and the pressure, and it’s going to get bigger.”

Mercedes expects Antonelli to swim rather than sink, but those comments suggest that – having already put six-and-a-half years of investment into his career – it would rather take the risk of the latter happening than take more time before putting Antonelli in F1.

And while F2’s mammoth 28-race schedule does mean Antonelli is getting plenty of track time and paddock knowledge this year, as well as introducing him to many new tracks, it’s actually restricting the amount of time he can commit to F1-specific learning. At least, based on Prema’s social media output, we know that he has superb information retention abilities.

 

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Social media, and the relationship with the media, is the next area where Antonelli’s own brilliance has camouflaged a potentially unrecognised issue.

Even before Antonelli had started a race in category higher than FRegional, Wolff was talking openly in the press about his prospects of being Hamilton’s replacement – building the public pressure and scrutiny upon his F2 campaign – and he admitted soon afterwards that he was guilty of talking up his protege too much. More recently, his excitement has been such that he has already stated on-the-record that Antonelli will be part of his 2025 line-up, anticipating the official team announcement that has no doubt been carefully planned by the communications department.

Meanwhile Antonelli – who is enjoying his first week as an adult having turned 18 the day before Mercedes announced his Italian GP practice outing – has nailed every single English language media session he has had this year.

Sometimes he is not confident with his answers – that seemed particularly true early in the year – but he’s always polite, puts time into thinking about his responses and when he can go into detail he does so in a very clear way. He has great communication skills, and radiates maturity at the same time as youth. When things have not gone his or Prema’s way this year, Bearman’s reactions have featured far more frustrations.

It should be made clear that he is only a year older than Antonelli, and having had his expectations set higher by his stunning rookie F2 season last year then starring F1 debut in March, the amount of misfortune and mistakes that have occupied his year – as well as an ongoing issue with tyre warming – has led to more answers rueing what could have been rather than picking out positives from bad results.

Bearman has already secured his F1 future, his cameo with Ferrari at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix leading to a full-time drive with Haas for 2025, and is one of many young drivers who could make a claim as deserving to be on next year’s grid.

Williams junior Franco Colapinto [pictured below leading Antonelli in Monaco] is the only driver in the top seven of F2’s standings who is older than 20, and got to drive in free practice at the British Grand Prix.

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

James Vowles, who was one of the most senior figures below Wolff at Mercedes and another key player in its junior programme before leaving to become Williams team principal in January 2023, previously also preached the strategy of patience in his team’s approach to its protege:

“I believe that you really can burn a driver if you put them in the car too soon,” he said on the weekend of Colapinto’s practice outing. “Our investment, our commitment to them has to be an amount of time in a historic car, an amount of time with preparation to make sure that if we choose them to go forward, they’re effectively in the strongest place they can be.”

But he has now followed Wolff’s more hurried approach, deciding ahead of the Italian GP to sack Logan Sargeant and put Colapinto in his seat for the remainder of 2024. This weekend he might be asked whether Mercedes deciding it would promote a driver before they had even done a full season in F2 had any influence on him doing the same.

Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu has also explained how his mentality will be should Bearman struggle in his rookie F1 season.

“I think you’ve got to look at the individual mistakes,” he said. “It’s depending on the context. But the thing is, Ollie understands the bigger picture very well. So my expectation is if he’s going to make a mistake, he will make a mistake in the right way, if you like. That’s not something to be shouted at for.”

Colapinto’s arrival in F1 will significantly drive up interest in the championship in his home country of Argentina. The impact won’t be the same in Antonelli’s native Italy, but like his teenaged F2 rivals he would be bringing his own audience to F1 and the combination of that and the interests of Italy’s mainstream media could make for a messy 2025 should Antonelli not perform as anticipated or if Mercedes provides him with an uncompetitive car.

Although Wolff may have drawn the ire of Italian media since his team started dominating F1 – and therefore contributing to a lengthy title drought for Ferrari – his comments and decisions will receive far more focus once he has an Italian driver in his line-up. And that in itself is a point of contention for some who find national pride very important in sport, since Ferrari were ‘denied’ any involvement in the rise of Italy’s greatest racing talent in a generation when he was signed by Mercedes so early.

Photo: FIA Karting / KSP

But would the build-up of pressure on Antonelli from the wider racing world have started earlier had he been a Ferrari Driver Academy member rather than only really picking up once he was in an F1 support series and in F1 seat contention?

Antonelli is driving for an Italian team in F2, but local media has not been as evaluative of the historically dominant Prema’s poor 2024 form as might be expected, particularly given how much this has contributed to its drivers’ struggles. One respected Italian motorsport journalist recently told Formula Scout that there will be less hesitation to point blame towards his team if Antonelli is having bad weekends in a Mercedes.

Outlets that specialise in covering youth sport, or follow young athletes at the professional level, understand that it is not just the teams that have a duty of care for teenaged talents. They know the dangers of ‘hype’, excessive scrutiny and chasing headline-grabbing answers from children who are still learning not only their craft but how to engage with the media.

Mass media, but worryingly more often F1-focused media, have realised that stories about Antonelli are an easy route to clicks but since they are still introducing him to much of their usual audience they need standout remarks from the driver or his bosses to lead content on. Antonelli’s own maturity means he rarely provides such punchy quotes, so Wolff’s comments have had more of a spotlight and that’s also in part down to media having more access to him. If such comments are interpreted as unfair criticisms of Antonelli, it can negatively impact the competitor-media relationship.

It’s unfair for someone who’s just turned 18 to be at the heart of that, and there are enough examples from other sports of how bad it can get when the media ignore the welfare of the ‘next big thing’ in their coverage of them. So why is Antonelli such an easy win for attracting readers? He has a very young, very online and very large fanbase.

Sports stars are some of the most followed people on the planet on social media, and historically it was their teams and the mass media that determined their public image as they were the ones who supplied the content to meet the audience demand. Now athletes at certain levels have more control, and their off-track or off-pitch persona can draw in fans who do not actually follow the sports they compete in.

F2 drivers’ Instagram audiences

Since being an F1 driver is a job, and involves off-track activities with sponsors, it’s understandable that teams may have some influence over professional drivers’ online presence. But there’s less of a corporate feel in the F2 paddock and the drivers reflect that with that they post. The fans want the drivers to be themselves, and to follow their highs and lows.

After a while, a young driver who has hundreds of thousands of people as emotionally attached to their career as they are may feel a responsibility to and pressure from that fanbase to perform. That’s something their management teams need to help them handle, because while they technically owe their fans nothing they cannot ignore that they are now public figures.

There are many examples of this in sports, but motorsport has rarely had a teenager thrown into the media limelight quite as intensely as Antonelli. Thankfully, so far, he has shown he is well equipped to handle it at all. But Mercedes has already come close to crossing a line with how it fosters its latest superstar, and held back its other proteges in pursuit of its current strategy. It may only take one or two future mistakes at its end to compromise all the work it has put into Antonelli’s career to date.