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Mercedes has announced that - as expected for many months - teenage rookie Kimi Antonelli will take Lewis Hamilton's place in its 2025 Formula 1 line-up.
Arguably not since Max Verstappen joined the F1 grid has there been a young driver as highly-tipped for success as Antonelli.
Having missed out on Verstappen all those years ago, Mercedes has guaranteed it won't experience that same pain twice by announcing Antonelli will graduate to its works F1 line-up in 2025.
Is the 18-year-old ready for F1? If he is, is he ready for the kind of pressure that comes with a Mercedes seat, considering that team's current upward trajectory and the fact he's replacing Lewis Hamilton? And what does this all mean for the driver he'll partner, George Russell?
Our contributors give their verdict on the move and its implications.
The inevitable comparison
Scott Mitchell-Malm
The comparisons with Hamilton are inevitable. Not because Antonelli's literally replacing him, but because this is probably going to be the most competitive car a rookie has had since Hamilton's debut in 2007.
A few months ago, nobody would have likely said that. Mercedes' trajectory has improved a lot in a short space of time from a very tricky start to the season - it was fourth or fifth best in the first couple of races - now it is a multiple grand prix winner in 2024.
That slow start was cited by Toto Wolff as one of the reasons why taking Antonelli on would be a legitimate option. He said that Mercedes was in transition and that a young driver would fit into the process of the team re-establishing itself at the front regularly, most likely when new rules came in for 2026.
But Mercedes is a good way along that process already. It has potentially stumbled slightly with a recent floor update, but the outlook's a lot brighter than it was even in April this year.
There's a chance it ends this season consistently fighting at the front again, which would make anything other than a title challenge disappointing in 2025.
The prospect of Antonelli being part of that is even more fun than a super exciting young talent getting a works team drive straight away already is.
It's just that extra degree more 'sink or swim' - and a unique chance in this generation of drivers. Even Verstappen had to wait a year for a race-winning car (ditto Oscar Piastri), let alone a title challenger.
Nobody's going to expect Antonelli to replicate Hamilton's rookie championship bid, and this is not to say that Antonelli should do that in 2025! Though they might be broadly similar situations on the surface, the details are different.
But if he's as good as Mercedes thinks and the car is up to it, he'll be fighting for race wins sooner rather than later. What a story that would be.
Why Mercedes deserves this to work out
Edd Straw
There's an old saying in sport that 'if you're good enough, you're old enough'. That's exactly the approach Mercedes is taking with Antonelli and everything that we've seen in his career so far suggests that this judgement is correct.
You can never be certain exactly how a driver will take to F1 with its unique pressures, intensity and a level of competition that exceeds anything Antonelli will have faced before.
But you can get some idea of their character and suitability, and Mercedes is clearly confident he's up to it on that score as well as on the driving side. His mileage in old Mercedes F1 machinery will have confirmed that.
Inevitably, there are concerns it's too much too soon but generally if a driver has the raw material to be a superstar they will make it work.
Verstappen did as a 17-year-old by performing at a high level and there are many examples of great drivers making the most of opportunities that come early.
Mercedes has taken a bold, decisive decision to trust its in-house judgement on Antonelli and deserves to be rewarded for that clarity of vision.
It's a stark contrast to the embarrassing mishandling of driver strategy at Red Bull when it comes to its decisions outside of those involving Verstappen and should pay off.
Antonelli has a good feel for where Mercedes stands
Gary Anderson
I’m a fan of giving new drivers a chance - some of my most enjoyable seasons in F1 have been with them - but we were never a frontrunning team so the pressure on everyone including the driver is very, very different.
With Antonelli replacing Hamilton it is a big pair of shoes to fill but Antonelli has run various tests with Mercedes in a variety of its cars so its people are the ones with the most information on his adaptability, professional approach, feedback and, in the end, speed.
All I can say is a friend of mine was up at the Silverstone Museum and had his trusty stopwatch with him when Antonelli was testing there and he was excited to tell me about this 17-year-old (at that time) who was lapping Silverstone at the same pace as Russell did in qualifying for the British Grand Prix.
It won't happen overnight but, in joining Russell (who is now a very experienced driver and has had the upper hand on seven-time champion Hamilton on various occasions), Antonelli has a good measure of where Mercedes actually stands. It's the old story that your team-mate is the first one to beat; do that and the rest will come.
It's been a few years since three new drivers from F2 - Ollie Bearman with Haas, Jack Doohan (whose most recent racing programme was in F2 last year) with Alpine and now Antonelli with Mercedes - have come into F1 at the same time.
And we are still waiting to hear what Red Bull intends to do with Perez and to some extent the outcome of that might just affect RB - will another door open?
I'm pretty sure it won't all go as planned, but well done to Toto Wolff and the Mercedes team for giving it a shot.
Mercedes risks losing Russell
Josh Suttill
Antonelli is absolutely the right pick for Mercedes. He's shown maturity beyond his years and is going to learn far more in one year with Mercedes than three seasons racing at the back of the grid with another team on loan while waiting for his big chance.
However, his appointment comes with a risk for Mercedes, with Russell out of contract at the end of next year.
Antonelli can very much be the future of Mercedes. The team and Wolff have had a huge guiding hand in Antonelli's racing career thus far and there's an emotional element there as well as a sporting one.
Antonelli is going to need a lot of guidance in his rookie year. He's inevitably going to make mistakes and how Mercedes manages that will be crucial.
But it's the kind of support that could make Russell feel like the team is starting to coalesce around the next big thing. Even if he initially triumphs against Antonelli he may feel a Ricciardo-Verstappen Red Bull-type 2017 scenario emerging and feel the need for an exit as Daniel Ricciardo did.
And what won't help is Mercedes' pursuit of Verstappen, which may take the choice away from Russell anyway.
Capturing Verstappen for 2026 remains tricky though and Mercedes risks placing itself in a scenario where it once again misses out on Verstappen but has also alienates Russell to the point where he considers a move for 2026.
Yes, Russell still makes mistakes and there's doubt over his ultimate championship-challenging credentials, but losing a driver who has compared incredibly well to his seven-time champion and pulls off drives like his Spa win (only illegal for non-performance reasons) would be a big loss for the team.
And there are few other drivers in or above Russell's bracket that you could get to replace him, as those such as Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon have already committed to other teams post-2025.
It would be left scraping the driver market barrel or relying on triggering expensive break clauses.
Sainz and Antonelli should be in each other's seats
Jack Benyon
Mercedes is doing much better this season than anyone could have predicted at the start of the year, but it has missed out on the best driver move to capitalise on that.
Sainz is a proven race winner, has a point to prove after being dropped by Ferrari, and could have come in and performed at a higher level than Antonelli immediately.
Even if he knew Mercedes was going to move him aside for Antonelli in a year or two, he would still be able to go and sign with a team at Williams's current level then! What would he have had to lose from a Mercedes sojourn?
It was a poor decision from Mercedes to pass on him.
As for Antonelli, the pressure will be crippling and, even if he emerges from that intact as Mercedes anticipates, he won't be able to deliver the short-term results Sainz would in a car that should be fighting up front.
And Williams doesn't have the car to benefit from what Sainz is capable of doing, and he and Albon are both going to feel quite ballsy about being the best driver in that team and directing where it needs to take the car at a crucial time for the team's development.
Antonelli could have learned in a lower-pressure situation at Williams and from a team-mate with lots of F1 experience in Albon, and had more time to develop.
He was driving a car that didn't have carbon brakes less than a year ago.
Even if the cream eventually rises to the top, in this case the dessert would have come together better and tasted nicer cooked on a lower heat!
More of a risk than it once was
Ben Anderson
The F1 fan in me finds it genuinely exciting that a multiple championship-winning team like Mercedes is prepared to punt on such an inexperienced rookie to replace the most successful driver of all time.
It will be so interesting to track Antonelli's progress and see if Wolff’s faith is justified.
This was always Mercedes' internal Plan A, once Hamilton dropped his grenade, so that faith was there even before Antonelli became a Formula 2 race winner and began impressing the team with his private testing performances in that awful 2022 ground-effect F1 car.
But this plan also felt like less of a risk when Mercedes started 2024 looking off the pace and gunning for 2026 - and F1's major rules reset - as its big chance to return to the front.
Wolff even described his own team as in a rebuilding phase, and identified the fact Mercedes (at that stage) not performing like a top team would reduce pressure on such an inexperienced driver.
Now Mercedes has unlocked some secrets to this current ground-effect formula, and become a multiple race winner again, the game has changed. Antonelli is not entering the same Mercedes team Wolff thought he'd be entering.
It's not a huge stretch of the imagination - and off-season car development - to picture Mercedes in the championship fight with McLaren and Red Bull (and maybe Ferrari) in 2025.
That would require Antonelli to be right on it from the start. He could very well be - just like Hamilton was in 2007 - but it's a stretch to expect such a thing, given Antonelli has done so little racing before reaching F1. Even teenage Verstappen had 23 grands prix to mature himself before being thrust into an occasionally race-winning car.
I would have thought a Russell-style multi-year F1 apprenticeship would have served Antonelli (and Sainz!) better - but if Antonelli really is as good as Mercedes thinks he is then fair play to Mercedes for taking the gamble.
It's so refreshing to see such a glut of new drivers - Antonelli, Bearman, Doohan, maybe Liam Lawson and Isack Hadjar too - getting these chances, in what is so often such a conservative championship when it comes to driver selection.
