Autobayng News Team
Amid the drama of the championship going down to the wire it was easy to overlook how well Andrea Kimi Antonelli ended his first season in Formula 1.
Indeed, over the final five grands prix he led experienced team mate George Russell home more often than not.
It would be easy to over-sell this kind of result as proof the rookie made a breakthrough at the end of the year and is certain to be a potent force in 2026. More realistically, Antonelli performed well against Russell in a debut season which proved trying for both at times, especially when Mercedes’ car development went off the rails in the middle of the year.
Antonelli salvaged an impressive fourth place from a difficult opening weekend in damp conditions at Melbourne, then collected four sixth-place finishes over five rounds. The last of those came in Miami, where he also impressed by taking pole position for the sprint race (before being elbowed out of the way at the start) and leading Russell home in the grand prix.
Both drivers’ form dipped as Mercedes introduced a suspension upgrade to mixed results soon afterwards. Russell claimed victory in Canada, while Antonelli backed him up with a breakthrough podium appearance.
But that proved the junior driver’s only points score in a run of seven races as he lost confidence in the car’s handling, encountered technical problems and, in Austria, crashed out on the first lap.
Once Mercedes reverted to their previous suspension configuration both drivers were clearly happier in the W16 and their results improved accordingly. Antonelli remained a couple of tenths off Russell in qualifying, which was no more than anyone would expect given the gulf in experience between them.
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Russell regularly finished in the top five over the second half of the year and Antonelli joined him on several occasions, returning to the podium in Brazil and Las Vegas (the latter due to a post-race promotion). During this spell Antonelli chalked up three more finishes ahead of Russell: pouncing on his delay behind Max Verstappen in Mexico, out-qualifying him in Brazil and passing him at the start in Losail.
For much of the season, Antonelli wasn’t regularly close enough to Russell to be able to capitalise on any problems he might encounter. By the end of the season he was.
Losing Lewis Hamilton at the end of 2024 was undoubtedly a blow to Mercedes. But with Russell consistently extracting so much from their car, and Antonelli now close enough to pick up the occasional result from him, Mercedes can feel confident they will go into 2026 with a driver line-up it can depend on to extract the most from its first car built to F1’s new regulations.
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| AUS | CHI | JAP | BAH | SAU | MIA | EMI | MON | SPA | CAN | AUT | GBR | BEL | HUN | NED | ITA | AZE | SIN | USA | MEX | BRZ | LAS | QAT | ABU | ||
| Russell | Q |  | | | | |  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| R | | | | | | |  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Unrepresentative comparisons omitted. Negative value: Russell was faster; Positive value: Antonelli was faster
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