Mercedes has put its faith in youth and George Russell’s new partner in 2025 will be 18-year-old Andrea Kimi Antonelli. Many experts have already called this decision a bold one and Toto Wolff explained the team’s choice on Sky Sports.
Toto Wolff: “We chose him because he is a special driver. His performances in karting and junior formulas are really impressive. In addition, we invited him for tests in which he drove the Formula 1 cars from previous years, and he was able to show excellent pace straight away.
Of course he still has a lot to learn, yesterday he confused training with qualification – in general his talent needs to be sharpened. But yesterday he was very fast and it was a pleasure to watch him work on the track. Of course this was only the case until the accident.
But I can say that he took the second corner of Lesmo 10-15 km/h faster than anyone else. Then Kimi made a typical rookie mistake, but that was forgivable. We like that he attacks so aggressively right away, but we still need to work with him. I believe that we will give Antonelli the chance to give another training session before the end of the season. I really hope that this team composition will last for a long time. By the way, I deliberately invited Stefano Domenicali, the president of Formula 1, to the presentation of Kimi as the new Mercedes driver, because I want our team to have more Italian fans.”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
