Andrea Kimi Antonelli was more nervous than he had been for some time. A racing driver’s career can often hinge on sliding doors moments such as these.
He was about to sit his driving test.
Thirty minutes later, the Italian teenager beamed beneath his mop of curly hair and raised a thumb to the camera. He’d passed — first time, of course. There would be no need to squeeze in another test between the hectic travel demands of the F1 calendar. And the ‘honor’ of being an active F1 driver without a road license — once true of Max Verstappen, who debuted at age 17 — will not apply to Antonelli.
It was an early dose of pressure handled well by the driver who will debut for Mercedes at the Australian Grand Prix on March 16, stepping into the cockpit vacated by Hamilton, a seven-time world champion 21 years Antonelli’s senior.
Antonelli knows he cannot expect to emulate Hamilton’s 12-year run at Mercedes, which yielded six world championships and 84 race wins to become the most successful driver-team partnership in F1 history. But he is taking in all the support he can ahead of his debut season.
“I’m the next Mercedes driver and I’m taking the seat of someone who made history in the sport, so it’s a big privilege,” Antonelli told The Athletic in an interview. “It’s a big responsibility, but I’ve got the right people around me.”
Cars have always been a central part of Antonelli’s life.
His father, Marco, watched how young Kimi played with toy cars and decided to take him go-karting at five.
Kimi instantly fell in love with the sensation of speed. (Antonelli goes by his middle name, which has no connection to the 2007 world champion Kimi Raikkonen.) Yet Marco, who still races in sportscars with his own GT team, Antonelli Motorsport, which competes across Europe, was initially wary of pursuing it too seriously. He didn’t want Kimi to get hurt in what can be a ruthless world.
“Sometimes motorsport can be cruel,” Antonelli said. “He was afraid that I would have been too hurt from disappointment, so he wanted to avoid that. But seeing that I really loved driving and really loved the sport, he decided to give it a go. He could see, without me really telling him, that I had the passion for motorsport.”
That love was furthered by father-and-son Sundays spent watching F1 races together. While Antonelli would have grown up watching Hamilton, Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso, his racing heroes are from much further back. His dad showed him the famous race between Gilles Villeneuve and Rene Arnoux at Dijon in 1979, regarded by many as the greatest on-track battle of all time, which gave him an appreciation of the sport’s history from a young age.
“I was just amazed,” Antonelli said. “You see how different it was, compared to now, the safety, the cars. You also appreciate the way the drivers were still battling on track despite knowing that the cars were not as safe as today. They were still going for it and you really appreciate seeing those battles.”
Villeneuve and Ayrton Senna emerged as Antonelli’s favorite drivers, in part thanks to their tenacious style on the track. “Ayrton is my hero, but Villeneuve, now I understand why my dad was such a big fan of him,” Antonelli said. “He was a lion on the track.”
While the history lessons Antonelli received as a child furthered his passion off the track, on the track, he quickly excelled, rising up the go-karting ladder.
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