The 2025 F1 season has seen a bevy of rookies make their debuts. While it’s an impressive batch of youngsters, the one driver with all eyes on him has been Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli. The 18-year-old is regarded as a prodigy, and has had a meteoric yet fast-tracked entry into the sport.
Antonelli was directly promoted to F2 last year, after winning the Formula Regional European Championship (FRECA) in 2023, skipping F3 altogether. Mercedes were confident that he had the talent and skill to take this leap up the ladder to F1.
And not even a full season into the feeder series, Toto Wolff announced him as Lewis Hamilton’s replacement at the Silver Arrows for 2025 and beyond. Naturally, the Austrian former racing driver holds Antonelli in high regard — so much so that he considers the Italian to be the next Max Verstappen.
On the Inside Line F1 podcast, former Racing Bulls team principal, Franz Tost was asked to evaluate Antonelli and his future. Having worked with the likes of Verstappen and Sebastian Vettel, Tost sits in the best position to analyze the hype behind a young driver like Antonelli.
“It’s a question of the head. It’s a question of a strong mentality,” he said.
The 69-year-old explained that having a strong mentality will be key for Antonelli to establish himself in F1 as one of its greatest. Tost also gave the examples of Lewis Hamilton, Vettel, Verstappen, Michael Schumacher, and Juan Manuel Fangio — often deemed as the GOATs of F1 and hold a whopping 27 titles between themselves — to prove his point.
18-year-old Kimi Antonelli becomes the first driver to score points in their first three races since… the man he replaced, Lewis Hamilton, 18 years ago! #F1 #JapaneseGP pic.twitter.com/rTSR5VW4TG
— Formula 1 (@F1) April 7, 2025
He highlighted that there was one major commonality between these drivers that allowed them to win multiple titles in a dominant fashion: a strong and relentless mentality.
The way Verstappen has been performing over the past four years to sweep the championship or the way Hamilton or Schumacher dominated the sport in the 2000s and 2010s respectively, reflect this mentality.
Even though he still has sterner tests ahead to determine whether he has the ingredients of a great champion driver, Antonelli is proving the paddock prophecies right so far this season. Despite still assimilating himself within the team, the 18-year-old has been able to deliver solid performances in the opening rounds of the championship.
The #12 driver has been able to haul in four points finishes so far and sits sixth in the drivers’ standings with 38 points — seven points clear of Hamilton himself.
Having said that, luck also plays an important factor in winning the world championship. Fernando Alonso is the perfect example that is often cited to make this point. Despite his apparent racing prowess, the Spaniard has only managed to win two titles owing to some unlucky career decisions he has made.
With only five races into his F1 career, though, Antonelli has a wealth of time on his hands to carve out a legacy for himself at the pinnacle of motorsport. While it is too early to say whether he can reach the heights Hamilton and Verstappen have scaled, the Italian has shown decent prowess to at least be capable of it.
