Andrea Kimi Antonelli has confirmed to be “a superb match” into Mercedes as Lewis Hamilton’s alternative in keeping with trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin, who believes there’s much more to come back from the rookie.
Mercedes opted to advertise 18-year-old Antonelli after only one season of Components 2 following Hamilton’s swap to Ferrari, marking the primary time it has run a rookie driver since returning to the game in 2010. Off the again of two top-six outcomes to start out his F1 profession, Antonelli has impressed Mercedes and Shovlin says the workforce has been having fun with serving to him ship on his potential.
“He’s a superb match within the workforce,” mentioned Shovlin (pictured above with Antonelli). “It’s tough to come back in after a driver who’s been as profitable as Lewis has. And for Kimi, it’s nonetheless actually early days in his F1 profession. Now fortunately, he’s bought a particularly skilled race engineer with Bono [Peter Bonnington] who’s serving to him work out the way to strategy the weekends and the way you construct your pace and the way you’re employed on the automobile setup.
“Everybody within the workforce’s fairly excited to be working with him and he’s simply having fun with it. I feel in Melbourne, he couldn’t fairly consider he was truly beginning an F1 race. Having your first race being a moist one, nicely, that’s notably difficult. However he’s settling into it and I feel there’s much more to come back from Kimi.”
Antonelli’s encouraging begin has mirrored that of Mercedes, with George Russell scoring two podiums within the opening two rounds, and Shovlin says the early indicators are promising for the workforce.
“We’ve proven that we’ve bought a automobile that works nicely over a spread of circuits,” he mentioned. “What we’ve additionally seen, although, is that McLaren are in all probability the workforce to beat. Max [Verstappen] is fairly fast. Ferrari definitely don’t appear like they’re far behind they usually’ve had a little bit of unhealthy luck. So it’s a reasonably tight struggle on the entrance.
“We’re working exhausting to try to carry improvement to the automobile as a result of, as I mentioned, we expect that we have to shut that hole to McLaren particularly. However we’ve bought three very thrilling circuits. Suzuka, that’s a incredible observe — very flowing, very quick. A number of drivers have that as their favourite on the calendar. First time for Kimi, although and that’s fairly a tall order for such a younger driver to be going there on their third race. However he’s excited to drive [there].
“Then on to Bahrain. We all know Bahrain as a result of we’ve been testing there. It has its personal challenges, however hopefully we’ll be a minimum of within the struggle for podiums. After which Saudi Arabia. That’s a road observe, fairly clean, once more, a comparatively new tarmac and that throws up its personal challenges.
“So, three very totally different circuits. And by the point we’ve carried out 5, we’ll in all probability get some concept as to the actual order. However as I mentioned, it’s simply thrilling to start out a season with a automobile that’s working nicely, that the drivers are having fun with driving. It’s way more predictable and we’re trying ahead to the rest.”
