'I don't know that I'm ready' - Zero-hero Antonelli deepens Mercedes' dilemma

Kimi Antonelli's best Formula 2 weekend yet - both in terms of scoring and in terms of sheer performance - encapsulated why Mercedes is facing such an enormous headache in deciding just what to do with its young Italian supernova, and why Antonelli himself sounds unsure.

Antonelli has appeared a shoo-in to replace Lewis Hamilton at Mercede for 2025 for so much of this year, but while it is extremely obvious Mercedes is enamoured with his talent and has been extremely encouraged by what it has seen in private testing in older cars, it is equally obvious its levels of certainty over replacing Formula 1's most successful ever driver with a teenager have ebbed and flowed.

The evaluation of the 17-year-old's rookie F2 season has consistently run up against the asterisk of team-by-team performance fluctuations in what has been the first campaign of F2's new car, but even so Antonelli has not made it easy to understand how well he has been doing.

A walkover win in the wet in the Silverstone sprint a fortnight ago was obvious evidence of an innate natural talent - but this was never-ever in doubt, never-ever the problem.

The question, instead, was and remains whether there is a risk of Antonelli being burned in a Mercedes Formula 1 car without more time in F2 - or at least time in a lesser F1 team - or whether he's already potent enough to where any more intermediate steps are wasted time.

In that context, Antonelli's words in Hungary on Sunday after his second F2 win were very revealing.

"I mean... I don't know if I will be ready, to be honest," he answered earnestly when asked about his current preparedness for an F1 graduation.

"I'm still learning a lot in F2. Definitely I still do quite a few mistakes. A few details that really matter, I'm still not doing that right."

EXAMPLE 1: THE SCRUFFY SPRINT

On Saturday during the sprint, there had been strong evidence on that front. Regardless of Prema's performance patterns this season and F2's particularities, Antonelli looked not ready for F1.

The field faced a 50/50 split on whether to run the 28-lap race on the less durable but punchier soft tyres or the sturdier, no-drop-off hards. The cooler conditions made the softs more attractive, and Antonelli used that early bite of grip to storm himself to the front. He used it too well.

He locked up the front left going into Turn 1, and while that didn't compromise his momentum and actually perversely kind of helped him take the lead further down the track through giving him a bit of a 'slingshot' line, he would lock up that tyre again and again going forward.

By mid-race, it was basically gone, Antonelli forced to pit and forsaking any chance of scoring. Victor Martins, who finished on the podium, proved that a more judicious approach to the soft made that strategy possible - and while chatting amongst themselves in the press conference room, the three on-the-road podium finishers were expressing disbelief at just how hard Antonelli had pushed to begin the race.

"I saw Kimi was pushing a lot in certain corners where... I would've pushed less, if I was on softs," said Richard Verschoor, the initial race winner (who then got disqualified for plank wear).

"And then at some point he started locking the tyres a lot, and normally that's a sign that they were really starting to go off."

It was a huge mess. If you watched only that session in the F2 weekend, you would come out being certain Antonelli was not ready for F1.

The rest of the weekend, though, painted an entirely different impression.

EXAMPLE 2: THE STUNNING FEATURE WIN

Antonelli beat sophomore Prema F2 team-mate Ollie Bearman - the guy with the Haas 2025 F1 deal, who looks every bit an F1 driver already every time he does a rookie practice session - by four tenths of a second in qualifying. Bearman arrived to the F2 paddock with a face full of thunder after that one. And even with the pitstop in the sprint, Antonelli was somehow just two and a half seconds behind Bearman at the finish as they took 10th and 14th.

And then he shone in the Sunday race - with the help of good fortune, sure, but fortune that only Antonelli could fully capitalise on.

Again, there was a split in starting tyres, and again Antonelli went against the conventional wisdom somewhat, this time starting on the harder compound.

He overtook Zane Maloney in a sumptuous wheel-to-wheel battle to run as the lead car on his strategy, but an early safety car for a Ralf Aron/Maloney collision then gave those on the primary strategy effectively a free pitstop that looked to have put paid to any chances of a big result for the likes of Antonelli.

Except it also gave Antonelli clean air as a consequence - and Antonelli's pace in the latter phase of his hard stint was monstrous. He pulled comfortably clear of the pack, with little sign of drop-off. Even if the race ran as normal from there, he was going to score big anyway.

It didn't run as normal. An Amaury Cordeel crash brought out the safety car again, this time to give Antonelli a free stop, and it gave him the race.

Fifth after his stop, he nailed Dennis Hauger on the restart, got past Enzo Fittipaldi before the first sector was over, got Gabriele Bortoleto at Turn 1 the following lap and went past Martins with DRS on the main straight another lap later.

By the time the race had finished, running to time, he was a ludicrous 12.5 seconds up the road.

There was no sign of those Saturday problems, which privately had been attributed to brake balance settings and communication regarding those settings - although Antonelli took full responsibility for them in the Sunday press conference, blaming himself for locking up. He also did highlight a set-up change to dial out some understeer, one that so clearly paid dividends.

Such was his Sunday race pace that, had the race run as normal, even though Martins seemed to have the race under control, there's every chance Antonelli would've had his number anyway.

A 'LIGHTER' MIND - BUT IS HE READY?

Antonelli has the reputation for being unflappable, but he has been very open about speaking of how the furore around him as the next big thing has weighed on him. He did so again on Sunday.

"Definitely from Silverstone I feel way lighter," he said, referencing the sprint win two weeks ago. "Quite a bit less pressure on my shoulders. The pressure was building up, weekend by weekend, obviously with all the talking.

"Silverstone was a big relief for me, and this weekend I was driving like my mind was way more free than the previous weekend. I was driving way more natural, without really thinking about the outcome. Just focusing on myself.

“And I think it really showed. Even this win, a feature race in the dry, is a big relief and a big result for all of us."

Recent months had changed the narrative over an Antonelli Mercedes promotion, from it being a foregone conclusion to it being in a serious bit of doubt.

There have been suggestions that he will be better-served either with more time in F2 or a Williams apprenticeship, and rumblings - seemingly supported by Antonelli's comments here - that the Antonelli camp isn't fully convinced about thrusting its driver into the pressure-cooker of a suddenly-very-good Mercedes seat versus the comparatively under-the-radar situation it might’ve been when Mercedes didn’t look like it an F1 race winner.

But Mercedes' Andrew Shovlin said ahead of this weekend: "To be honest, where we're racing doesn't really affect that [the driver choice]. We want the two best drivers, and we need to make the best car. The team are going to focus on that. I think if you get those ingredients right, you'll do fine.

“Certainly where we are in the competitive order doesn't affect whether we're looking for an experienced driver or a young driver."

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Whether that's shared all across the Mercedes hierarchy privately is a different matter. But even if concerns exist about Antonelli’s readiness - whether on Mercedes' side or on the side of Antonelli's family - a Sunday like this offers a very clear incentive to push past them.

For, alongside Antonelli's admission that he may not be ready, there was also another important acknowledgment - that he's getting there.

"I'm still not doing everything right. I don't know [if I'm ready], to be honest.

"But I'm trying to improve and not make the same mistakes again, and I think today was the proof."