It’s fair to say the Italian Grand Prix weekend did not quite go to plan for Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Mercedes.
The Italian’s promotion had been long-intended, and the timing of his confirmation was, of course, not an accident. But the backdrop of his outing on Friday very much was.
Antonelli only turned 18 a week ago, and Mercedes had resisted the temptation to drop him into an FP1 session any earlier than Monza, despite an FIA regulation change that would allow 17 year olds to take part upon request. That’s because Antonelli had already handled every step of his development in an impressive way, and Mercedes knew far more about him already than any single FP1 outing was going to tell it.
Yet the experience was still going to be invaluable, and Mercedes does need to complete two mandatory FP1 sessions with a rookie driver per the regulations, so what better way to announce Antonelli’s 2025 race seat than at his home grand prix weekend after he had just made his first appearance in the 2024 car?
It all made perfect sense, and for about nine minutes of that practice session, it couldn’t have gone any better. He was spotted by Mercedes in karting, but since dominating that scene, Antonelli has also shown an ability to get into pretty much any car and drive it close to its limit instantly.
Think of the way that Max Verstappen so often looks to be pushing harder than almost anyone else from the very first lap of a race weekend: It’s a trait that many of the great drivers pride themselves on.
Unfortunately, on this occasion, it proved to be too much too soon, as Antonelli’s second flying lap went from being set to usurp Lewis Hamilton at the top of the times – Hamilton himself having just set his lap – to an extremely heavy impact in the Parabolica tire barrier.
“We’d rather have a problem in slowing him down than making him faster,” Toto Wolff said afterwards. “Because what we’ve seen from one and a half laps is just astonishing.”
The outpouring of positivity towards Antonelli, even after he’d just heavily damaged a car so early in his first outing, was well-placed. Obviously it served Wolff and Mercedes to prevent the narrative becoming critical or questioning of his approach, given the news that was to follow the next day. But also, at 18 years old, such an incident could have a major impact on a driver’s confidence if not handled sensitively.
And it’s actually a continuation of a theme with Antonelli. He was asked to step up to the Formula 2 championship straight from Formula Regional European Championship this year – a leap of two categories in just his third full season of car racing. Why? Because the first year brought the Italian and German F4 championships, and the second both the FRECA and Formula Regional Middle East titles.
So when pushing him so quickly towards F1, Mercedes knew there would be a steep learning curve required. And it became even steeper given Prema – who he has driven for throughout his junior career – has endured a much tougher F2 season than expected, struggling somewhat with a new car.
But that has meant Antonelli has needed to hone his racecraft in a different way to when he was dominating championships. Despite that backdrop and circuits he didn’t know, he had three point scoring finishes from the first four F2 races, when he arrived at another new track in Melbourne.
Here, when fighting for a first podium of the season in the Sprint race, he dropped it trying to hang on around the outside of a gaggle of cars and retired. It was a sign of his inexperience – dealing with the impact of traffic on the F2 car’s aerodynamics and the Albert Park grip levels – but not something to be criticized, as he learned from the situation quickly.
He’s only retired from an F2 race once since, and that was when he was taken out at the first braking zone on the opening lap in Silverstone, a retirement that came one day after his first win in the Sprint race, and two starts before his debut Feature race win in Hungary.
So the crash on Friday in Monza might have been frustrating to deal with at the time, but Mercedes knows it has a driver who will use that experience to evolve quickly. Rookies will make costly mistakes, but it’s Antonelli’s raw speed and adaptability that has always shone through.
But more than that, a crash was never going to derail any plans or cause Wolff to second-guess himself at all, because, as one team member put it, “there’s a deeper love” beyond just driver and boss.
“You can’t talk about yourself because you come across like a t***!” Wolff said when summing up Antonelli in front of a packed house in Monza. “I think what to say about Kimi… a perfect family background. His family knows everything about racing that you need to know as a driver and outside.
“[His father, Marco] has been with Kimi straight from the get-go. [He has a] wonderful, wonderful mother that has been supportive, so you can recognize a pattern with the strong dads that understand racing and give the right support and right stick, and the mother who is trying to be the nice one in the relationship.
“That was 100 percent true for you and I think we see that pattern with the great ones. Humility is a big factor. Loyalty… As you can imagine, Kimi growing up and having sporting success some of our competitors have been after him, especially for nationality reasons. Marco Antonelli has always been clear ‘you gave us the opportunity and that’s why we are sticking with you’.
“Raw talent, that he definitely has. And an ability that you can’t train. As I said, it’s easier to make someone calm down in terms of aggressiveness than the other way around… you can’t make somebody quick. Then it’s on us to try to help, try to condition Kimi that every lap doesn’t need to be like this.
“James Allison actually said when he launched himself at the first lap [on Friday], the first braking into the chicane he had both tires on the grass already. So the difference between free practice and qualifying we have to discuss! But that’s also Kimi. He’s putting the car into the ground and to be able to crush it – crush it, not crash it – on the first lap is a great ability.”
The next time F1 fans are likely to get to see that ability in an FP1 session looks set to be Mexico City, and by then Antonelli is likely to have developed even further as he prepares for his race debut. It might not come with the same fanfare as Monza, but it will be a public display of the rapid progress that Mercedes has seen ever since he joined the setup as a 12 year old.
It is a rapid ascent and his rookie F1 season won’t be without its bumps in the road, but Mercedes has been preparing Antonelli for it for nearly six years, and he’s shown the team the main thing it wants to see – sensational pace – every step of the way so far.