Mercedes sees a lot more to come from ‘brilliant fit’ Antonelli

Andrea Kimi Antonelli has proven to be “a brilliant fit” into Mercedes as Lewis Hamilton’s replacement according to trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin, who believes there is a lot more to come from the rookie.

Mercedes opted to promote 18-year-old Antonelli after just one season of Formula 2 following Hamilton’s switch to Ferrari, marking the first time it has run a rookie driver since returning to the sport in 2010. Off the back of two top-six results to start his F1 career, Antonelli has impressed Mercedes and Shovlin says the team has been enjoying helping him deliver on his potential.

“He’s a brilliant fit in the team,” said Shovlin (pictured above with Antonelli). “It’s difficult to come in after a driver who’s been as successful as Lewis has. And for Kimi, it’s still really early days in his F1 career. Now happily, he’s got an extremely experienced race engineer with Bono who’s helping him work out how to approach the weekends and how you build your speed and how you work on the car setup.

“Everyone in the team’s quite excited to be working with him and he’s just enjoying it. I think in Melbourne, he couldn’t quite believe he was actually starting an F1 race. Having your first race being a wet one, well, that’s particularly tricky. But he’s settling into it and I think there’s a lot more to come from Kimi.”

Antonelli’s encouraging start has mirrored that of Mercedes, with George Russell scoring two podiums in the opening two rounds, and Shovlin says the early signs are promising for the team.

“We’ve shown that we’ve got a car that works well over a range of circuits,” he said. “What we’ve also seen, though, is that McLaren are probably the team to beat. Max is pretty quick. Ferrari certainly don’t look like they’re far behind and they’ve had a bit of bad luck. So it’s a pretty tight fight at the front.

“We’re working hard to try and bring development to the car because, as I said, we think that we need to close that gap to McLaren in particular. But we’ve got three very exciting circuits. Suzuka, that’s a fantastic track — very flowing, very fast. A lot of drivers have that as their favorite on the calendar. First time for Kimi, though and that’s quite a tall order for such a young driver to be going there on their third race. But he’s excited to drive .

“Then on to Bahrain. We know Bahrain because we’ve been testing there. It has its own challenges, but hopefully we’ll be at least in the fight for podiums. And then Saudi Arabia. That’s a street track, quite smooth, again, a relatively new tarmac and that throws up its own challenges.

“So, three very different circuits. And by the time we’ve done five, we’ll probably get some idea as to the real order. But as I said, it’s just exciting to start a season with a car that’s working well, that the drivers are enjoying driving. It’s much more predictable and we’re looking forward to the remainder.”