Max Verstappen shows true colours with Kimi Antonelli comments as Mercedes picture clear
Max Verstappen has offered some advice to Kimi Antonelli as the pair continue to be linked with Mercedes' vacant seat for the 2025 season.
Max Verstappen showed his class ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix, offering his advice to Kimi Antonelli as the 17-year-old continues to be linked with a sensational promotion to F1. The pair are the leading targets for Mercedes as Toto Wolff looks to replace the Ferrari-bound Lewis Hamilton in 2025.
Antonelli is still just 17 years of age and has enjoyed a meteoric rise through the feeder series ranks. After dominating the Italian F4 and FRECA championships in 2023, he was promoted to Formula Two with PREMA Racing for the 2024 campaign, skipping out Formula Three entirely.
The Bologna-born racer has even been linked with a promotion into F1 as early as this summer with Williams monitoring the teenager as a potential option to replace the struggling Logan Sargeant mid-season.
For Verstappen, the pressures of stepping onto the grid at such a young age are familiar. The Dutchman is now a three-time world champion and one of the most successful drivers in F1 history, but he made his debut as an inexperienced teenager, jumping up from F3 to drive for Toro Rosso aged just 17.
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Offering his advice to Antonelli ahead of the race in Monaco, he said: "When you are talented, and you can see that Kimi is very talented, I don't think you should be too worried - and you have to make mistakes.
“Ideally you want to make these mistakes when you are not fighting for championships, so I got lucky starting at Toro Rosso where not so many people are looking at you.
"So you can make some silly mistakes here and there because it is important to make them because even though you tell yourself all the time: 'I cannot do this, I cannot do that', you will only adapt really if you make them and then move forward.
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"When you are that young, you just focus on trying to go as fast as you can, make your mistakes and have good race results and try not to think too much about it.”
While many within the F1 paddock expect Antonelli to be driving alongside George Russell at Mercedes next season, Wolff still believes that he has a chance of snatching Verstappen away from Red Bull. The Dutchman is frustrated with the power struggle currently going on in the background at Milton Keynes but has reservations about the Silver Arrows’ pace.