Toto Wolff’s Mentorship of Andrea Kimi Antonelli: A Fresh Start for Mercedes in F1

For Toto Wolff, the decision to promote Andrea Kimi Antonelli to a full-time Formula 1 race seat with the Silver Arrows squad at just 18 years old is more than just a professional move. It’s a chance to correct past mistakes and capitalize on the prodigious talent that Antonelli has shown since his early days in motorsport.

A Long-Term Partnership Born out of Potential

Wolff first signed Antonelli, the son of renowned GT racer Marco Antonelli, back in 2018 when he was just 12 years old. Since then, a development program with Formula 1 as the ultimate destination has been in place, and Wolff is now considered a close friend of the Antonelli family.

As a multiple karting champion, Antonelli made his transition to car racing in Formula 4 in 2021, where he went on to win both the Italian and ADAC championships the following year. In 2023, just his first season, Antonelli won the Formula Regional European championship, a feat that F1 teams now view as the best breeding ground for future driving success.

Mercedes opted to skip the F3 step on the F1 support bill and place Antonelli directly in Formula 2 for 2024, a move intended to challenge his ‘winning easy’ streak. The plan was initially envisioned as a two-year project before Lewis Hamilton’s departure to Ferrari accelerated Antonelli’s F1 graduation.

A Promising Start in Mercedes’ Testing of Previous Cars (TPC) Programme

Antonelli’s performance in the TPC programme, which utilized both 2021 and 2022 Mercedes F1 cars, caught the attention of the team. Before his first run in the former, the illustrious W12, he made sure to memorize all 30 staff members required to run the car during the test at the Red Bull Ring. Both sides took this rise extremely seriously.

A further exercise in testing Super Formula machinery late in 2024 was scuppered by illness that had also severely impacted Antonelli’s final F2 round in Abu Dhabi last year.

Ready to Face the Challenges of a Rookie Season

Just like that, Antonelli found himself being led around the press room by a Mercedes press attache at the F175 Live event to meet the media as a fully-fledged race driver. “It’s been quite interesting,” he said when Motorsport.com asked if he felt his life had changed in that short time.

Pre-season testing in 2025 went well for Mercedes, with Antonelli’s day two race simulation shading Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc by just 0.1s each lap on average. However, Antonelli left Bahrain lamenting a lack of preparation in extracting the best from the Pirelli tyres in qualifying due to time lost in unexpected rain and then a battery issue.

Qualifying is, after all, one of his new team-mate Russell’s greatest strengths. “For the long runs, I got quite a decent understanding because I’ve been doing a lot of long runs and been experiencing different types of approaches,” he said. “[For example], how to introduce the tyre into the run.”

Nevertheless, Antonelli is likely to be learning in the glare of the media spotlight this season, a situation that only Liam Lawson will be able to relate to among the big rookie crop. This means Antonelli is likely to be retreading the ground of learning to win at a new and even tougher level. And, should there be any repeats of his 2024 Monza FP1 shunting, then it is likely Wolff will need to pick him up just as he did at critical times last year.

Toto Wolff’s Vision for Antonelli’s Future with Mercedes

“When we decided to go for Kimi, it was clear that we are going for a young driver that has shown tremendous potential in the junior series since we’ve known him,” Wolff said in Melbourne on Thursday. “For Kimi, it’s about the time to develop, to learn the tracks, to be on top for next year, the regulation change. That means great results and that means moments where it’s going to be more difficult.”