Why Mercedes' teenage prodigy has a shot at replacing Hamilton – MPH

F1

Lewis Hamilton's 2025 departure to Ferrari will leave one of F1's most coveted seats empty at Mercedes – but it may already have the driver it needs to replace him, writes Mark Hughes

Kimi Antonelli Mercedes junior driver

Hamilton's successor may already be anointed

Mercedes

Mark Hughes

Once the dust has settled from Lewis Hamilton’s startling switch to Ferrari from ’25, the main topic of speculation – probably for quite a few months – is going to be the identity of his replacement at Mercedes alongside George Russell.

The obvious contractually available contenders include the driver Hamilton is replacing at Ferrari, Carlos Sainz, the evergreen Fernando Alonso and the rehabilitated Alex Albon bursting to get himself back into a fast car. But the outside contender is currently 17 years old, has yet to even make his F2 debut and has missed out F3 altogether. Meet Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes’ contracted junior driver.

It sounds ridiculous from the perspective of now to think he could be slotted straight into the Mercedes works team as Hamilton’s replacement. Russell himself would be forgiven if he raised an eyebrow at the idea, given that he still feels his three-year apprenticeship at Williams under Mercedes control was two years too long. The consensus throughout the F1 community is that it would be too early for Antonelli.

Kimi Antonelli

Teenager Antonelli is one of the front-runners to take the F2 title

Mercedes

But it would feel slightly less ridiculous if we were talking about Antonelli as the F2 champion who had just blitzed the field in his rookie year there. Everything about his career to date suggests he is fully capable of doing that. The F2 guys were all out testing F3 cars recently (as F2 testing is restricted) and in the rain Antonelli was fastest by whole seconds. He’s been on Mercedes’ books since 2019 when he was a karting sensation – and he won the CIK-FIA European karting championship two years in succession in 2020 and ’21. In his first full season of car racing as a 15-year-old he blitzed the 2022 Italian and German Formula 4 series. Some of his wet weather performances were astonishing. He won the one-off Motorsport Games F4 Cup at Paul Ricard driving with a broken wrist from a qualifying accident. Last year he won the European Formula Regional Championship with Prema, the team with which he graduates to F2 this year, as team mate to the Ferrari-contracted Oliver Bearman (who was impressive in his two FP1 appearances for Haas last year).

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In short, Antonelli looks something special. Would he be ready for F1 so soon? People didn’t believe 17-year-old Max Verstappen was ready for F1 in 2015 having done just a single season of car racing (in F3). But he was. Was he the Max Verstappen he subsequently became? Of course not. There were some quiet, unproductive weekends at Toro Rosso in between the starring peaks. But at no stage did he look like he shouldn’t be there.

If Antonelli can live up to his promise in F2 this season, would it really be such a risk for Mercedes to slot him into the seat vacated by Hamilton? Given that in Russell it has a world class, highly experienced grand prix winner in the other car. With the known quantity of Alonso at McLaren for 2007 Hamilton himself was slotted straight into a top car in his rookie F1 season, fresh from winning the GP2 title – and damn near won the championship. Admittedly, he had much more car racing experience than either Verstappen or Antonelli when he did that, with two seasons each in Formula Renault and F3 before his rookie GP2 title. So his data banks were not quite as empty. But he still destroyed preconceptions about not being ready for a place in a top team. Just as Verstappen would win instantly when transferred from Toro Rosso to a Red Bull in just his third season of car racing. The special ones can do it.

Again assuming Antonelli ends this season as F2 champion, would tolerating a few low-key weekends in ’25 among some starring peaks really be a non-starter for Mercedes? Would that really be worse than inviting someone with less of a long-term future with the team to keep his seat warm? It probably won’t happen. Mercedes will more likely place him at Williams, as it did with Russell. But maybe, just maybe.

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