Italian Andrea Kimi Antonelli will make his Formula 1 debut at the Australian GP in March. There is a lot of hype and expectation around the 18-year-old after a very strong junior career.
After plenty of success in karting, Mercedes junior Antonelli was already on many people’s radar when he made the jump to F4. Following a few events in 2021, he made the transition fully in 2022.
Dominant in two F4 categories
Across the Italian and ADAC Formula 4 championships in 2022, Kimi Antonelli won a staggering 22 races.
He took the Italian F4 championship by 104 points over Irishman and current McLaren junior Alex Dunne. Despite missing a round of the ADAC series as PREMA skipped the event, he won the title by 47 points over current McLaren FE driver Taylor Barnard.
In F4, it’s difficult to break away as the slipstream is extremely powerful. Nonetheless, he did that on many occasions, dominating races like Max Verstappen during the 2023 F1 season.
A remarkable year of success concluded with a gold medal in the FIA Motorsport Games. Antonelli won for Team Italy in spite of breaking his left wrist following a crash in qualifying.
More championships in 2023
While he had to work harder for it in 2023, Antonelli took out the FRECA Middle East and European championships with PREMA. The youngster from Bologna won eight times.
He beat Barnard once again, this time by 40 points over the European winter in the Middle East series. In the European version, he defeated Martinus Stenshorne by 39, although it was overshadowed by the tragic passing of Dilano van ‘t Hoff at Spa.
The big jump to Formula 2 last year
Along with plenty of questions regarding the Mecachrome engines and whether they are equal for every driver, PREMA did not get up to speed as new cars came in for the 2024 F2 season.
Nonetheless, the Italian youngster was able to show flashes of his natural talent and speed.
In the pouring rain at Silverstone, the then 17-year-old put on a clinic in the Sprint race as he dominated in appalling conditions, winning by almost 9s from Zane Maloney.
At the next round in Budapest, a brilliantly timed Safety Car opened the door for the Italian. As he started on the harder tyre, he could pit for softs. An early Safety Car had gone against him, levelling things out.
He quickly worked his way through from P5 to P1, winning by over 12 seconds from Victor Martins. Antonelli also collected the fastest lap.
6th in the overall standings represented a good season despite the aforementioned difficulties, beating PREMA teammate and fellow 2025 F1 driver Ollie Bearman in the process.
Going over the limit in his first FP1 outing
At Monza in FP1, just one day before he was announced as a Mercedes driver for 2025, Antonelli went out to impress. He leaned on the tyres too hard throughout a lap early in the session. That meant he lost the car in Parabolica as they overheated, crashing at high speed. While he was okay, the car was not.
Next time out in Mexico, a far more cautious approach was taken as he learned a valuable lesson.
What can we expect in 2025?
Kimi Antonelli did a lot of private testing in older Mercedes cars in 2024 to get him prepared for 2025. So it would be fair to suggest he should get up and running pretty quickly.
The Italian driver has a lot of talent, and he is extremely quick. It would be foolish to think he is average based on the lottery that is F2.
While his teammate George Russell is very quick, he is also prone to some errors. We’ve seen quite a few, particularly in race trim.
If Mercedes can finally build a compliant car throughout a season and they run at the front, Antonelli can win a race in 2025.
Beating Russell might be a stretch. However, if he can push him all the way to Abu Dhabi in the intra-team battle, that would count as a massive success in Antonelli’s first F1 campaign.
