5 days Ago By Henry Valantine
Toto Wolff confirmed his “instinctive response” to the news of Lewis Hamilton leaving Mercedes was it being the opportunity for Kimi Antonelli next season. News came in February that Hamilton will be moving to Ferrari for the F1 2025 season, but it was not confirmed until August that Antonelli would be stepping up to Formula 1 – with Mercedes team principal Wolff looking to assess the teenager’s progress in Formula 2 first before reaching a decision. Teenager Antonelli jumped past Formula 3 altogether in being moved from Formula Regional machinery last season into Formula 2 cars this year, with Mercedes putting the Italian through Testing of a Previous Car (TPC) days in Formula 1 cars for the first time to assess his viability to drive at the top level.
It was announced at the Italian Grand Prix weekend that Antonelli would be making the jump up to Formula 1 next season, making him one of the sport’s youngest ever drivers in the process. But despite him being Wolff’s initial choice, he revealed he waited for the Formula 2 season to play out with the team “rationally and logically acting” before promoting him to Formula 1 next season – with talks at the top level of the team and the Mercedes board being had before a decision was reached. 👉 F1 2025 driver line-up: Who is already confirmed for the 2025 grid? 👉 F1 driver contracts: What is the current contract status of every driver on the 2024 grid? “Because of my more difficult upbringing, I don’t struggle to take decisions – it’s actually something that comes quite natural to me,” Wolff explained on the High Performance Podcast .
“There is an instinctive response, internal response that I have with myself, and that was literally, ‘that’s the opportunity for Kimi’. “And on the other side, there was another F2 season to go and lots of testing for Kimi, so you have to, in a way, stand back and say, ‘Hold on a minute. That’s your instinctive reaction.
’ “So that’s probably going to happen, but there could be breaking points where you should be rationally and logically acting, and then obviously picking the brains of all the good people that I work with here in Mercedes, and also talking to Ola [Källenius, chairman of Mercedes board, ed.] and Markus [Schäfer, Mercedes chief technical officer, ed.] at Mercedes in Stuttgart, and picking their brains is important before coming to a final conclusion.
“And that decision that was made was with Ola, and was also in the room with Gwen [Lagrue], who runs our junior program, James Allison [technical director], Bradley Lord [chief communications officer], just to confirm my first initial instinct.” Antonelli will step up to a Mercedes seat next season to partner George Russell, who will be entering his fourth year as a ‘senior’ Mercedes driver after rising through the junior ranks, and spending three seasons with Williams before joining Hamilton at the Silver Arrows. Read next: Jacques Villeneuve takes issue with Jos Verstappen over Johnny Herbert demand.
