Mercedes has revealed the paint scheme for Kimi Antonelli and George Russell’s 2025 W16 Formula 1 cars.
The livery for the W16 was unveiled at the F1 75 launch event at the O2 venue in London alongside the other nine F1 teams - but we'll have to wait until February 24 to see renders of the 2025 Mercedes F1 car.
Antonelli is central to one of the biggest F1 stories of 2025; after just one season in F2, the 18-year-old will make his F1 debut in place of Ferrari-bound seven-time F1 champion Lewis Hamilton.
It's a Merc!
— The Race (@wearetherace) February 18, 2025
What are YOU rating this 2025 livery out of 10? 🤔 pic.twitter.com/dlHlHD6cUu
The young Italian will partner George Russell, who embarks on his fourth-straight season with Mercedes. Russell has delivered three of Mercedes’s five grand prix wins in the ground-effect era - a marked decline from its dominance in previous seasons.
"It's going to be a significant change this year," Russell explained of the W16. "It's like every year we've uncovered a problem, we've solved it and it's created a new one. And we've probably been a lot more disciplined with every change we've made.
Image: Getty Images
"We have been more thorough than ever in terms of the simulator running, just to ensure we're not going to fall into a new trap. So far it's a reasonable step, but you've got no idea what everyone else is doing."
Last year’s Mercedes W15 also combined Mercedes’s traditional silver with black - a colour choice introduced on the 2020 W11 and carried over to its successor, the W12. The 2022 W13 did away with the black livery but it returned on the 2023 W14.
In a video looking back at Hamilton’s F1 cars, team principal Toto Wolff said that the W11 was an “important” car in that it introduced the black paint scheme in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The team boss said to Hamilton that Mercedes would continue running black on its cars even in the absence of the seven-time champion. He said: “We’re going to continue. It’s what you brought.”
The team's kit also changes this season thanks to a new deal with Adidas, which marks the German kitwear manufacturer's first foray into F1.
Mercedes will break tradition this year by forgoing a Silverstone shakedown to launch its W16 F1 car - instead opting to hold a digital launch of the new car on February 24.
The team will perform a shakedown with the W16 in Bahrain ahead of pre-season testing at the same circuit on February 26-28.
Click here to see the paint schemes of all 10 teams for the 2025 F1 season.
