www.the-race.com/formula-1/mercedes-kimi-antonelli-f1-2025-hype-mistake/
The mistake Mercedes admits it's made with its next F1 megastar
TL;DR: Hyping him up in the F1 paddock and not fully letting him focus on F2
That was such an easy mistake to avoid though with everyone and their mother pointing it out early
Yup. I thought it was weird to put so much pressure on him. Lots of people saying “Max did it so why can’t Kimi?”. I still think Kimi can be a great driver but the outside pressure is ridiculous. Just let the guy drive
Lewis leaving was a PR disaster for them. They brought the 4th or 5th best car to the season, lost their biggest star to a main rival, and pretty much had nothing to generate interest for their future.
Hyping up Kimi was all they had. "Things aren't so bad folks, look! We have this kid Kimi coming up the ranks who is gonna be Max 2.0! We might even give him the drive next year!"
They treated him as a PR asset, not a kid trying to develop into a driver.
This is the biggest thing, it's also why they're offering such a fuckton of cash to Max.
The Merc team has been badly losing in optics for years now, they're trying to find any win they can get somewhere to distract people off their performance.
Surprised they didn't write another embarrassing open letter when Lewis left.
they should have signed a driver instantly to avoid all of this chaos. Just sign a driver like Bottas for a year so there is no speculation and he can have a full year in F2 without the massive pressure of being compared to Verstappen before you’re even in F1.
They were already hyping up Kimi well before Lewis announced his move. I think it is one of the contributing factors for Lewis' move, because he saw the writing on the wall. Mercedes wasn't going to let Russell walk, and they don't want to let Antonelli walk like they did Verstappen.
Every passing year is making Toto look like a fluke
He oversaw a team that absolutely nailed the engine regulations at the most opportune possible moment, and he signed Lewis Hamilton. Two undoubtedly great moves that have bought him a decade of leeway, but he's looking like he might not have a true second act in him.
he signed Lewis Hamilton
It's well known Lauda convinced Lewis
I can’t wait for Lewis to dedicate his first Ferrari race win to Lauda
Shhhh.... Don't jinx it yet.
I was never a fan of LH, but I want to see that happen.
Oh wow I completely forgot about how close Lewis and Laura were, and how that might have influenced his Ferrari move
Laura??? Now I have some questions...
Bold of you to think he will get another win
pleek
The thousands of people working at Mercedes are the ones who nailed the engine regs and Lauda had a lot to do with signing Lewis. Lauda is no longer with us and the talent has been poached from Merc. Merc won't be coming back to the top for a while.
I can't really argue with that, but at what point do you decide to give or not give credit/blame to a senior exec? A lot of the people who nailed the engine regs were still at Merc when they didn't create such a dominant monster for the new iteration. So is it to their credit the last time and Toto's blame this time?
The brain drain from Merc is a real problem, but I don't know how they're meant to solve that. Offer people more money, better benefits? It seems like a lot of staff wanted a new challenge after a decade or so at the dominant team.
I think it all has to do with the cost cap. When you spend 600 million building 3 different car concepts it's easy to find one that works. when you get one shot this is the result.
If you want to credit a senior exec, it still wasn’t Toto. That was all Ross Brawn.
Williams and McLaren better hope that engine factory hasn't lost too much of its juice.
I think it pretty clearly already has. Not that the Merc engine is bad per se, but it no longer has a distinct advantage over the RBPT or Ferrari engines. The less said about Renault the better...
Do we have any idea how much work merc did on that engine? Are there articles listing the thousands of engineers, zillions of dyno hours, 20 prototypes running on dynos at the same time, etc?
What you’ve described is what Ross Brawn did.
All Wolff did was politick his way into ownership of the team after all the hard work had been done.
Damn you seem to perfectly know his workflow and influence, enlighten us more please
Wolff joined Mercedes in January 2013.
Hamilton had been signed by the team in the summer of 2012.
The team had already started engine development before January 2013.
As you’re 200IQ I’ll let you connect the dots.
Ok cool
Plus the guy no one talks about. Aldo Costa designed Mercs cars up till he left in 2019, once the new regulations came into play Merc seems to have hit a downward Spiral without him.
14 WCC titles as a designer for Merc and Ferrari, and yet he's almost never brought up in conversation, while Newey is constantly lauded as the most successful F1 designer/engineer with 12.
I've always assumed it's because for a large portion of his time at Ferrari he worked under Rory Byrne. But he was incredibly impactful with them that once he left, Ferrari seems to dip and hasn't won a Title since (Also for other reasons).
Plus his time as lead designer at Merc was so dominant that he obviously is just as talented as a lead designer. But then again It could just be time doing it's thing. Like how you never See Colin Chapman or John Barnards name mentioned either.
oversaw a team that absolutely nailed the engine regulations
Wolff only got to Merc after they had already developed the engine. It was Ross Brawn that made the decision to focus on the engine in 2013 when Toto was still at Williams
Shhhh let’s make Ross Brawn’s hard work at Mercedes look like Toto’s work.
Wow, that triggered you, huh?
Not really. Just correcting the mistake in the statement.
And you thought that the most constructive way to do that was through passive aggressive sarcasm?
Did you not?
I think that's more on Brawn for bringing in all of the technical staff they has and ready to dominate the new regs, Toto did a good job but didn't really suffer any setbacks, since 2021 he has had a shocker.
So much talent has left the team and his leadership is nowhere near as good as it was previously, maybe that's just because the car was so good so it was difficult for him not to fuck up.
Toto did the job he was supposed to do well for years, which was serve more as a businessman and operational politician while the team operated well enough without rocking the boat because of Brawn’s crew and Lauda. Horner wouldn’t have done as well in Toto’s position, Toto wouldn’t have done as well in Horner’s. Brawn or Todt might not have done either well. It doesn’t necessarily make one better or worse.
I agree that it doesn't necessarily make one better or worse but Horner once he leaves would go down as probably the best TP ever and that's a lot
Ollie Bearman seems to be having the same issue. He's scored the same amount of points in his one F1 race than he has in six F2 races.
The difference between them is Ollie already showed his talent and is basically guaranteed to go to haas next year
He's having awful luck on f2. Just this past race, he was leading before his engine stalled in the pits
right, he had pole in Jeddah, but raced in the Grand Prix instead and then the latest bit of mechachrome madness. If he had slightly better luck and only raced in f2, he would easily be in the top five.
"his engine stalled?" Did it stall itself?
Doing the lord’s work. Ty
Toto is actually cunningly anti-hyping him. “But he's 17. Fourteen months ago he drove an F4 car, and there is so much expectation in Italy. We are a little bit guilty also of talking about him at that stage.
“We should let him do his F2 thing and deliver results and not be too carried away with what could be or should be."
The only 'hyping' is skipping F3 with him, and his F1 tests. And the last 3 races he's 3rd best points scorer in F2. There's pressure obviously, and calling himself Kimi is part of it, that he seems to quite like.
Mercedes: “We messed up by hyping Kimi so much.”
The-race.com editor: “That’s right, call him megastar in the headline.”
Had to scroll down too far to find someone saying this.
“And even more so when it missed out on the ORIGINAL Verstappen”
Sorry, What?
at that time, mercedes was very interested in verstappen, but their line up was already very strong with rosberg and Hamilton, so they offered verstappen a GP2 seat.
while red bull offered max a F1 seat at toro rosso, which he obviously accepted.
Hindsight is 20/20, letting Rosberg or Hamilton go in favour of an F3 rookie would've been a spectacularly stupid call. They made the correct decision at the time.
Could they have perhaps got him into Williams? I never watched back then so not sure what Williams line up was like
At the time Williams was a strong team with a strong car, they probably had their own interests
It was Bottas and Massa, who in 2014 and 2015 helped the team to P3 in the Constructors. So, not really viable
Toto also owned 15% of Williams at the time. There’s no way he would risk the investment with a lesser pairing.
I thought he sold his stake when he left to join Mercedes?
He did
Certainly I remember him once saying in an interview that one of his proudest days in the sport was Austria 2014 when it was a Mercedes 1-2 then Williams 3-4
Lol wtf couldn’t have been a better result for him even of he tried. Home GP (for Toto) and with his 4 drivers 1,2,3,4, with the main team 1,2
Verstappen was strong as fuck in F3 but Merc already had Ocon in their books who was also very impressive.
They had no reason to fast track Max into F1 at the time. Nobody could've predicted Rosberg hanging up his gloves all of a sudden.
It’s still the correct decision NOW.
Hindsight is 20/20... They made the correct decision at the time.
I feel like you should have to pick one of these.
If hindsight is in fact 20/20, then they made the wrong decision at the time. They made the safe decision at the time, but history has shown that Max would have been a better choice than Rosberg.
Rosberg was really good and German. If they kicked him and put a 16 year old into the Mercedes at that time everyone would have asked wtf they are smoking. 0% chance that happens in any timeline.
And yet, time had shown that signing Max would have been the best possible choice.
I'm not arguing about the likelihood. I'm pointing out that the obvious choice was also the wrong choice.
I think you don’t understand what hindsight 20/20 means.
Also I don’t think you can say it was the wrong choice, it was the only choice they had.
I think you don’t understand what hindsight 20/20 means.
Right back atcha. It means we know better than the past. We have more information than the past does, so we are in the right position to judge the behaviors of the past, but not as good a position as the future will be.
The point is that only the future can judge.
Also I don’t think you can say it was the wrong choice, it was the only choice they had.
Pretty sure they legally could have taken the gamble. They were wrong to not take the chance on the teenager.
Yes but they’re saying in that moment they made the right decision. That’s where hindsight being 20/20 comes in. We’re interpreting a past decision with the benefit of knowing its outcome. Excluding that, it absolutely would have looked silly to ditch rosberg for an unknown.
That’s where hindsight being 20/20 comes in. We’re interpreting a past decision with the benefit of knowing its outcome.
Yes, we have the benefit of knowing the outcome.
Excluding that, it absolutely would have looked silly to ditch rosberg for an unknown.
HINDSIGHT IS 20/20. We, you and I, have no reason to exclude the knowledge we have over the past.
Why y'all want to grade the past on a curve makes no sense to me. We know things they didn't, we can judge their choices against what actually happened.
As it turned out, choosing the WDC over the child was the silly option all along.
They 100% weren’t wrong as I explained already. Noone would have ever kicked Rosberg for a 16 year. Noone would have ever made the decision.
That’s like saying you were wrong for not betting on Verstappen winning the championship 3 times in a row by 2025 after he won his first karting race in 2005 or whenever it was.
That’s like saying you were wrong for not betting on Verstappen winning the championship 3 times in a row by 2025 after he won his first karting race in 2005 or whenever it was.
Yes. We were all wrong for not making that bet. Hindsight is 20/20. It is obvious from here that what looked obvious before was in fact wrong all along.
2016 Rosberg was a World Champion. 2016 Max was the rookie everyone made fun of for crashing willy nilly.
That's all great. But the whole point of 'hindsight is 20/20' is that we here in the future know better than Toto could have in 2016. We now know that making the obvious choice was in fact the wrong choice. They were wrong to choose Rosberg over Verstappen, and we have plenty of evidence to show it.
No, it was not the wrong choice. It doesn’t change anything for Mercedes, they dominated the old regs and HAM led them to unprecedented success. Since 2022 Mercedes has not produced a winning car, please explain how their current situation would be different if they had Max in the car.
They'd have Max on the team, which is preferable to not having Max on the team...
And their current position would be absolutely no different, thanks.
Sorry, but if you think having Max on your team is no different to the marketing department than not having Max, then I've got a monorail to sell you.
It's frankly embarrassing the number of fans who can't stay focused on what the spectacle is actually about. The race is a means to an end, the results of the race are a means to an end.
Brand value is the real world goal. Talking about the points is arguing in fiction. We need to remember that the teams are motivated in the real world, rather than by the fiction of the show. Sports are just improv shows with elaborate rules. The point is to entertain the audience, moreso than it is to win prize money. The TPs understand this is more profitable than just chasing prize money, and their bosses sure as shit do, too.
Not reading enough critical theory, none of ya.
and that's exactly most important benefit of having 2 teams with a same owner, you can do whatever you want with drivers from farm team, rotate as much as you want, give a direct seat and let someone develop.
Except one seat has been tied by the engine manufacturer (Yuki) and the other seat hasn't seen much driver development (Danny).
I mean, I wouldn’t trade Rosberg or Hamilton for a rookie max in any universe (he was also 17). The Hamilton and Rosberg pair was probably the strongest driver pairs in merc history, and definitely the strongest lineup on the grid (barring vettel and ricciardo, I’d still put HAM and ROS above). There’s no way Max would’ve matched that. If they had a Williams seat, then maybe, but I don’t think they had that sort of influence in Williams given that Frank was still running the show.
u/Takis12 is a lovely shit poster. It's the ORIGINAL Verstappen wording he is let's say "questioning."
Honestly I don’t think it could have been better for them if they had a Hamilton-Rosberg-like dynamics but with Max in 2017-18 when Ferrari became stronger. Vettel could have pulled a 2007 Raikkonen and snatched the title.
I don't think Verstappen would've beaten Hamilton in 17 or 18 tbh. The fact that Ric beat him in 17 and and they matched in 2018 says everything. He would've won more races than Bottas but that's about it.
That's the problem though. He would have taken points from Hamilton and I don't exaclty see a young max verstappen playing second fiddle and giving preference to Lewis like bottas did.
I have no idea how you can say that he was matched by Ric in 2018 with a straight face.
It was clear that Verstappen was the faster driver start of 2017 until 2018.
Every time something (reliability, crashes) happened to Max when he was comfortably in front of Daniel and Daniel capitalized on that in 2017.
Yes, Daniel had lot of reliability issues in 2018; but he was already clearly behind of Max in races before the reliability issues and was pretty much destroyed in qualifying.
Yes, Ricciardo was a tenth behind in pace and lost his H2H in quali overall. Regardless, Danny was close enough to him and snatched RBRs only 2 poles that season and in the first half he was leading him on points finishes. Ric had 4 DNFs in the last 9 races. Verstappen to me didn't turn into the driver he is today until 2021. He was definitely getting better and better every year.
Ric's 2018 season was weird as fuck though. He was better than Max during the first part of the season.
He had shit luck with reliability and he was not happy at the time because RBR offered Max the defacto No 1 deal even though Ric was driving better at the time.
Ric only started to lose pace when RBR started to develop their car towards the "on the nose" style that Max preferred. Probably the right call because Max is a superstar now.
Well it’s not that they made a mistake there. IIRC they won a bunch of races with Hamilton, Rosberg and then Bottas.
Yea almost like they won everything they could
The stupid thing is that what would they have done w Max that they didn’t do with Lewis and Nico?? They couldn’t have won any more than they won. Literally.
And then when they started to slide downwards post 2021, Max on meth wouldn’t have been able to redeem them. Their car legit just sucks now. It’s not like it’s a #2, can scrap for wins with a “better” driver.
Turning back the clock and taking on Max wouldn’t have changed a single thing about Merc’s trajectory. Which is why it feels EXTRA disrespectful and ridiculous for Toto and Press to be constantly repeating this mantra of “oh what could have been”. What exactly could it have been?? Like they forgot that their driver line up won them all those WCCs?????
Toto has completely fucking lost it.
Mercedes is very sad they couldn't get Jos to sign for them.
Jos did drive for Tyrell though and one day they eventually did become Mercedes
They missed out on Max twice. First time when he was 16 and he chose Toro Rosso and not a year in F2 sponsored by Mercedes, and again when he was 19 and signed a long term RBR deal.
And presumably again for 2025 if their attempts to persuade Max to activate any release clause fail to go anywhere
While Kimi may be a stellar, generational talent, the competition is bloody strong if Mercedes get strong enough to also get into the mix with the top 3. Verstappen, Leclerc and Norris are no longer the future of F1, they are the face of F1 right now, and they are doing a bloody good job. Piastri is getting better and better, and Russell has managed to hold his own against Hamilton, who is still a beast in the race. It's honestly better if Mercedes stay comfortably 4th as if they do catch up to the guys ahead, that will legitimately cook him with pressure. He has 3 drivers who are racing crazy good, 1 who is getting there quickly, 1 who is still extremely impressive in race craft, and a teammate who can be bloody quick. The only other person in the top 4 teams would be Perez, if he's retained, and by some chance if Sainz ends up there, it'll put Kimi under even more pressure.
I was initially of the opinion that Merc are rushing him but after watching the Allison interview i changed my mind. It's obvious they see something in him that's exciting. Plus he has definitely impressed Mercedes privately, I'd imagine the seat in 2025 is as good as his provided he continues his performance.
As for F2, a championship is highly unlikely however as the article pointed that's not all without it's caveats and nuances.
Though it's definitely a bit delegitimising f2 as a feeder series if a team just opts to conduct private tests. But then again Prema just isn't where it was when Charles was driving or more recently Oscar.
I mean the current season is definitely a bit of a "F2 isn't an F1 feeder series" one. Since the top 3 drivers who have decent gap to the rest of the field: Maloney, Aron and Hadjar, none are likely to make it to F1 even if they win F2. Aron isn't even in a driver academy after Merc dropped him to focus on Antonelli. Maloney and Hadjar are Sauber and Red Bull respectively but neither seemingly has any rumors about being linked to an F1 seat and no way Hadjar would even get a shot with the sheer number of drivers Red Bull has available.
It’s Aron’s rookie year in F2 so if he won there’s no way he doesn’t have a good chance at F1. Aron does kind of seem to be consistent but not fast though, so I don’t think his chances are amazing.
You’re right that winning F2 doesn’t really get you into F1 anymore, and there’s 3 junior drivers lined up before anyone else to take F1 seats. (Bearman, Kimi and Lawson)
But that doesn’t mean that F2 doesn’t matter. Bearman is seen as an F1 lock not just because he did well as a reserve driver, but mostly because he won 4 races in his rookie year. It’s obvious why he would be more appealing than someone like Teddy Porkchops, who took 3 years to win and one won one race in his championship season. F2 is an F1 feeder series, but obviously you have to do more than just win it to really impress an F1 team.
This year, Maloney has looked really impressive and Bortoleto has two poles in 4 races so far. I think those are the two guys that could have legitimate shots at F1 in the upcoming years.
Sorry but I had to laugh at Teddy Porkchops.
it delegitimising F2 as a dedicated feeder series for F1, but it is feeding other motorsports series as well.
before last step, teams are investing in talents, but to make a last step you have to have something more than a victory in F2, which by itself is a great achievement and pass to many paid competitive racing series like indy or WEC
F2 currently seems to be the main feeder series for Indycar
Yup...and this is honestly great for both Indycar and F2. It's a legit great series for those young drivers to end up in competitively and financially...and bringing F2 drivers increases Indycar's international audience.
Indy has it's moments. I'm not a big fan of oval racing, but the road courses are mostly pretty great. I miss the engineering element that F1 brings, but of course that's good in terms of competitiveness. As long as I don't have to watch NASCAR, I'm good.
Agrees entirely. I watch almost every Indycar road course race and also dislike ovals so I skip those. I've tried a number of times, I fully understand it and the appeal to some people, I get the strategy and everything, etc...I'm just not entertained by it lol.
F2 hasn't been a feeder series for F1 for some time now. They've been sending more drivers to Indy, Super Formula, WEC, and IMSA.
F1 has been stopped up. Alonso is driving at 45. There are no rookies this year.
I've heard of the idea of using rookies in the sprint races.
Tbf Max is probably going to win his 4th after never participating in GP2/F2 and a number of the recent winners aren’t even racing in F1.
F2 hasn’t been a legit feeder series for awhile now. Teams know about the engine lottery and other issues behind the scenes.
I've long held the opinion, and always will, that the good drivers are just good. I don't think George benefited at all from spending years at Williams, in much the same way I don't think there's any reason not to just stick Kimi in the Mercedes last year. If he's good enough he'll manage, if not a year or two at Williams first won't have made any difference
Arguably, Buttons F1 career was almost ruined by hyping him up and sticking him in a top Team too early. Yes, there are some drivers who can immediately handle the pressure that comes with a top drive, like Hamilton or Verstappen, but I think they are the exception to the rule and most should gain a bit of experience first. That doesn't mean they should be stuck at the back of the grid forever, like Russel seemed to be.
the pressure that comes with a top drive
Lucky for Antonelli Merc isn't a top drive anymore.
Boom, roasted.
While this is true, it's still a big team and comes with the expectations associated with that. I'd even argue that going to a big team which has recently fallen off is a bigger risk for a driver trying to establish himself than going to a current top team. Because the expectations will still be there, but you don't have the machinery to match them. That's what happened to Kovalainen in 2009 and Perez in 2013 for example. I also think Russel is currently in danger of having this happen to him. If Lewis leaves and Merc continues in the mid field, people will quickly write him off unless he manages to pull off some spectacular drives.
The difference is Antonelli won’t have the pressure of a title chase right away.
And let’s be real, a lot of people wrote off Russell before he even got to Mercedes lol.
Button never came in with the hype of a Verstappen or Antonelli.
He also didn't come into a top top car, Ralf Schumacher only scored 24 points in it over a season.
Button didn't have a car capable of wins until he started winning races.
Button came with a lot of hype, and top team doesn't necessarily mean team with the best car, it means large team with the ressources to potentislly build a championship winning car and whose drivers receive a lot of attention and are expected to deliver very good results. As I stated in another comment, if you're not an established driver and find yourself in such a team, but the car is crap, the risk of ruining your career is high because you don't have the machinery to deliver the expected results.
If you are against an established driver who also isn't delivering then you are largely protected.
Someone benefited from Russel in Williams, but it definitely wasn't Russell. Good drivers can go top teams right away, arguably should, but they need to come with reasonable expectations. Max To Redbull was basically "let's see how good this winderkid is". Gasly and Albon was a good example how too high expectations can ruin the driver. If mercedes put Kimi in their car presenting him as the next max, he basically can't deliver.
Even Max didn't start in the red bull, he started at Toro Rosso, even if it wasn't a full season
He was at Toro Rosso for all of the 2015 season. He moved to Red Bull in the middle of 2016.
Oh yeah my memory wasn't correct
Well I think young drivers are farmed out to farm teams not for their own benefit (despite what the teams say) but for the teams benefit.
If a young promising driver turns out to be an error-prone or mentally weak (by f1 standards) driver, then you haven’t just pissed away half or more of a season of a team gunning for the championship.
So they might say it’s for development of the driver but that’s just the corporate doublespeak. The main risk management is for the team.
george won both f3 and f2 and they left him on williams for three years. kimi skipped f3, obviously isn't going to win f2 in the shitbox prema, and would likely only be on williams for a year. not the same situation at all imo
obviously isn't going to win f2 in the shitbox prema
I stopped watching F2 a few years ago. These guys used to be some of the best on the grid. What happened?
New ground effects car with an even smaller setup window happened, plus Prema joined WEC
It’s just this year they’ve slipped back, with the new car. Last year Vesti was just 9 points off Pourchaire for the title, and Prema was just 31 points off ART for the title.
i actually just made a comment pondering this in the feeder subreddit but tl;dr they haven't nailed the car setup for whatever reason compared to the other top teams. their quali pace is fine but their race pace is abysmal. it's improved marginally since bahrain but not nearly enough to put them into podium contention consistently.
art grand prix is another (formerly?) good team struggling to nail the setup this year. there are other teams that are failing too but those are the two i'm really surprised about.
Car of course is the same, they can get a one lap setup for quali somewhat right but they can't get the race pace right
Last year they were quite decent, but this year not. Probably most is due the fact that they have new cars on which they did little to no testing, probably they will get better after the summer break but by then f2 is almost over
I think mid-tier teams are a great place to develop bad habits. Even if Williams or Alpha Tauri or whatever they are called now are under the super teams umbrella I seriously doubt they have the same level of detail. Not just on track but off track as well, getting into a good rotation of a race weekend with Williams is very different then a race weekend with Mercedes. Even meshing well with free prqctice rituals is gonna be worth a tenth by race day and every team definetly does it differently.
It didn't seem to hurt Alonso, or Senna having some time with shit teams to learn their trade with less pressure.
Can we stop pretending this guy is a genius manager already? Do we need another Year?
Save you a click from this utterly pointless article:
The “mistake” they’re referencing is the oft mentioned failure to sign Verstappen in 2015 and Merc don’t want to make that same mistake with Antonelli. Nothing new here, just a rehash of a take we’ve seen countless times over the last 9 years.
On the contrary it's a good summary of the whole thing and the mistake is about pressure and hyping Kimi. It has nothing to do with Max.
It's a pretty good summary of the whole situation for those that are perhaps new to F1.
It’s also a pointless take from Toto bc in the ensuing years Mercedes won everything so where exactly was the “mistake?” Toto should put his money where his mouth is and put Antonelli in that seat next year.
YES THANK YOU.
How disrespectful is it to trash your existing line up as a “mistake” when one of them gave you all the wins you have?
Would signing Max would have somehow made them win the WCC more than they already did? Merc DOMINATED that era and it’s like Toto has completely forgotten that, and is just blaming his current car situation on his drivers.
A mistake would have been letting Max go in favor of Russell, which didn’t happen. But Max in for Lewis who they did sign? Just what the holy fk.
Toto is trying to overcompensate for his shortcomings (losing staff, shit cars) by fast tracking Antonelli.
Kimi is clearly struggling to keep pace in F2. Max's case was different because he managed to hit the ground running in F3. He didn't struggle at all.
IMO, Kimi should do another year in F2 if he fails to get in to the Top 3 in the championship. Which will probably be the case. Karting and F4 almost has nothing in common with F1. His current achievements should not be enough to earn him a F1 seat.
Plenty of promising driver's careers got ruined because of premature promotions. (Yuki, Logan..etc)
Struggling to keep pace where? He’s been close to Bearman in qualifying, just about 2 tenths down at worst. He just can’t do shit in races because of how the Prema has no race pace. He seems to have some tyre management issues to sort out but pace should not be a concern.
Bearman was even being gapped by Cordeel and he was struggling to stay in DRS behind Miyata after the slow stop at Imola.. that’s how bad their race pace is right now.
Can Antonelli nope out of Mercedes and join Redbull?
Very weird that a team principal is part owner, so where is his accountability for the last 3 years.
Radical thought: there won't be any more Merc superstars, the team is going nowhere.
People said the same thing about McLaren a few years ago. Look at them now.
McLaren's period of midfield malaise has lasted over a decade, so I am not sure they support Merc being good any time soon.
Antonelli to Williams for 2 years is the play. Put Bottas in the Merc for two years to rebuild it with the new regs.
I am in now way biased in this assessment.
This quote from Allison is interesting:
“He came at this generation of cars, the ground effect cars, with an open mind. Yeah, he feels all the same things that you'd expect him to feel. But he's not sort of polluted by the previous cars.
“So he just takes them as they are and tells us what he is feeling as weaknesses and strengths, and lets the engineers work to try to improve those things.
Many Mistakes at Mercedes these days
User deleted comment
1mo
I'd wait a bit before making these lists, you know how europerez is, and the reception to his bad performances will be way worse than last year now that McLaren and ferrari are closing in. there's a reason why perez is so adamant about closing his renewal early in the year
Haas: Ocon | Zhou
Nah Bearman is taking one of those seats.
Zhou is definitely gone. Dude is invisible out there and hasn’t escaped Q1 all season.
Bearman needs to mind his business in F2 before thinking of that seat. He’s at the bottom of the table currently.
Negatives:
- 20th of 22 in the driver standings.
- 30 points behind his teammate Antonelli.
- Gene Haas dislikes the rookies.
Positives:
- Showed good performance in F1 with Ferrari.
- He missed two F2 races which one of them he was going to be on pole for good points haul.
- Komatsu said that they will prioritize FP1 performances over F2 results.
Any driver can score points in a Ferrari
Bearman will be at Haas
Idts they kick out Ric if he continues an upward trend and isn't disastrous. Agree with the rest.
He is on downward trend again after one spike of a good performance. He needs to beat Tsunoda (who is, according to Daniel's own fans, ''only in F1 because of Honda'') by a good margin every sesssion if he is going to get that Red Bull seat. And he is far from doing that.
I do agree and am rooting for Lawson but Ric has marketing pull + Horner goodwill so i think if he performs okay he might just hang onto the seat.
Obviously if he doesn't beat Yuki, the path to RBR is over and something that Ric himself said before he took the VCARB seat that's the goal and i feel if that door closes he might leave on his own.
Is he on an upward trend? Also they’ve got Lawson waiting in the wings and he’ll become a free agent if he doesn’t get a 2025 seat.
After the chasis swap in China arguably?
As long as tsunda keeps beating him, there should be no place for him next year. Why keep a guy at the end of his career if he can't beat the guy he should, when you have promising rookie lined up at the start of his career. This should be absolute no brainer
It has basically been said that Ricciardo needed to demolish Tsunoda if he wants the Red Bull seat, and he is not doing that .
So bottom line is he driving for Mercedes F1 in 2025 or not yet?
How can you even be a F1 mega star without being in F1?
Maybe unpopular, but I don't think they're making a mistake by hyping him at all. It's kind of obvious that he's going to be in the seat next year no matter how well he does in F2. All the eventual greats had high expectations coming in and met them. So go ahead, make everyone excited about him
This is kind of a lame article, certainly much less dramatic than what the headline might lead you to believe…
Then I realized it was from The Race and made sense why.
The mistake is continuously using language like “Next MercF1 UBERULTRAMEGASTAR” when discussing Ant.
And his rookie F2 season so far is statistically weaker than the rookie season of every GP2/F2 graduate in F1 now bar Sergio Perez (who had a rough start in 2009 before finishing runner-up in 2010).
This is wrong. In Albon’s rookie season, he had 35 points after the fourth round (one less than Antonelli has now) and no wins, poles, podiums or fastest laps. (Granted, Albon also missed the fourth round… but he’s still a notable omission from their list.)
Fix your fucking car!
The drivers will line up at your doorstep.
- Horney and Me!
User deleted comment
1mo
Putting the expectation on an almost 18 year old kid to be the next verstappen can't end well.
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