Kimi Antonelli told to ‘slow down’ and avoid ‘awkward’ situation

Andrea Kimi Antonelli has been advised to “slow down” ahead of his debut F1 season with Mercedes.

After just a single season in Formula 2, having bypassed Formula 3 altogether, the 18-year-old Italian is replacing seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes, where he will team up with George Russell.

Antonelli made headlines when he crashed minutes into his F1 practice debut at last year’s Italian Grand Prix, the same weekend he was announced as a Mercedes driver for 2025.

Former grand prix winner Juan Pablo Montoya thinks it will be hard for Antonelli to “live up to the hype” in his rookie F1 campaign.

"It's going to be hard for Kimi Antonelli to live up to the hype," the seven-time grand prix winner told CasinoApps. "It's going to be really hard.

"He's got enough speed to be really, really good, but with speed, accidents can happen. There's always talk that he had lots of crashes in the old cars.

"I think he's fully committed to it and if Kimi can control his emotions, understanding it might take time to perform, I think he is going to be okay.

"If he wants to come out and race and beat everyone, it can backfire really quickly. If someone can pull his reigns and say to him, 'Slow down tiger’.

"He has time where he doesn't need to put himself into bad situations. [But] I think there's a good chance he might end up in an awkward situation because he's shown how quick he can be, but he has shown he can make mistakes.

"You go fast, you crash, you don't crash, you go slow.”

Montoya continued: "You need to find that balance of still going fast, without going over the top.

“When you have someone like Russell in his prime as your teammate, who's been with the team for as long as he has been, it's not going to be easy there's no priority there, nothing.

“This is what you have, he needs to make the best out of it. You're either going to be really good or have really bad and average weeks. You need to learn to make the most of those weeks.

“You have to understand why they were bad. What little differences can he make to change from average to good. If he takes the time to see these differences, he'll be able to change and react to situations in the right way.”

Antonelli passes driving test

Earlier this week, Antonelli confirmed he had passed his driving test just six weeks before his F1 debut at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.

Despite racking up several thousand miles of testing in an F1 car to prepare for his debut season, Antonelli had not been road legal - until now.

“I did a little mistake on the theory, one mistake but overall it went pretty well,” Antonelli told Sky Sports at the Autosport Awards on Wednesday night.

“I’m not going to lie I was pretty nervous. I was pretty scared because I knew I only had that shot to do it because otherwise once the season starts I don’t really have time to make it again.

“So I was telling myself that I really had to do it. It eventually went well so it was a big relief, a big relief.”