How Mercedes has shielded Antonelli from F1 media glare

Mercedes is enacting a plan to manage the media frenzy surrounding its Formula 1 junior Andrea Kimi Antonelli, which will advance whether or not he’s promoted from F2 for 2025.

Antonelli’s career has famously progressed at considerable pace, while the 17-year-old Italian’s close relationship with Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff after joining the manufacturer’s junior scheme in 2019 has long marked him out at as a future F1 star for the Silver Arrows squad.

But expectations surrounding Antonelli were raised massively in the fallout of Lewis Hamilton’s decision to leave Mercedes and join Ferrari in 2025 – in part because the seven-time champion had signed a two-year, 1+1 contract in 2023 that Wolff admitted had been so arranged in case Mercedes felt it needed flexibility to promote another of its juniors with Hamilton’s career potentially winding up.

Indeed, when Hamilton made his shock announcement in February, Antonelli was quickly touted as his most likely replacement even as other candidates, including later a surprise Mercedes swoop for Red Bull’s Max Verstappen that still remains possible, were assessed.

Things have swung back and forth in the months since, with Antonelli’s lack of headline F2 results in the early part of the season – including his pitstop stall the day after his Prema Racing team-mate Ollie Bearman had won the Austrian sprint race – seemingly giving Carlos Sainz renewed hope of joining Mercedes for 2025, based on Wolff’s comments to Spanish media.

But that was before Antonelli impressively scored his first F2 win in the tricky wet Silverstone sprint race.

After this, he faced the F1 press corps – gaining respect for admitting his victory “was needed” in his first answer of a session where he went from guarded (his arms crossed, shield-like underneath holding his microphone) to open.

His explanation of how an F1 car “gives you a lot of confidence when you drive it because it has so much downforce that you can really push it” was revealing in the context of how younger drivers are more regularly being rapidly promoted to the top single-seater categories.

These are expected to “swim”, as Wolff had repeatedly said in the same press conference room the day before.

That appearance in the official F2 press conference was only Antonelli’s second of the season, after he’d finished second in…