The ‘weird’ F1 2025 driver scenario that ‘makes no sense’

Michelle Foster
Karun Chandhok walking through the paddock.

Karun Chandhok weighs in on Lewis Hamilton's replacement.

Mercedes’ decision to sign Kimi Antonelli may have left some people baffled as he didn’t set the stage alight in F2, but Karun Chandhok says engineers who’ve worked him with say he’s the best they’ve seen “since Max Verstappen”.

Although 2024’s top two drivers in Formula 2 are making their Formula 1 debuts this season in Gabriel Bortoleto and Isack Hadjar, so too are the drivers who finished sixth and 12th – Antonelli and Oliver Bearman.

Karun Chandhok: ‘Because that’s a weird thing…’

They’ve been signed by Mercedes and Haas respectively, Bearman a Ferrari junior who is tipped to be the driver who will replace Lewis Hamilton when he leaves Ferrari.

As for Antonelli, he’s the one who has taken Hamilton’s vacant seat at Mercedes for the F1 2025 championship with huge expectations on his shoulders.

Having made a leap up from the Formula Regional European Championship to Formula 2 last year – skipping the F3 class – Antonelli won two races on his way to sixth in the standings.

That didn’t stop Mercedes from making the call to promote the 18-year-old straight into their Formula 1 team, bypassing the Williams route that George Russell took.

That Antonelli had crashed Russell’s W15 just 24 hours before the announcement in an FP1 crash at Monza had some fans and pundits questioning whether Mercedes were asking too much of the driver.

18-year-old Kimi Antonelli joins the F1 2025 grid

?Where are they now? The 10 youngest drivers ever to compete in F1

?F1 records: Who are the youngest drivers ever to race in Formula 1?

But according to former F1 driver Chandhok it’s about more than just a junior driver’s results as he revealed that he spoke with engineers who worked with Antonelli during a test last year and they claimed he was the “best” they’ve seen “since Max Verstappen”.

“You look at the current situation with the driver market, right?” Chandhok said on the Autosport Podcast.

“We’ve got so much new blood coming into the grid for 2025. We’ve got complete four [five] rookies, Liam Lawson as well who I’d classify as a rookie, so that’s five [six]. That’s a quarter of the grid.

“And that wouldn’t happen unless you have people looking at the junior formula as paying attention to not just the results, because that’s a weird thing.

“If you look at the results in F2, which I find often so many people still in the F1 paddock just looking and go, ‘well, this makes no sense. Like Kimi Antonelli’s ninth [sixth] and Ollie Bearman is 15th [12th]. Why are they getting the seats when they got signed?’

“Remember having this conversation back in Monza? People couldn’t get it.

“You have to dig deeper. You have to be able to go and make those phone calls and talk to people in these lower formulas in the paddock.

“When Antonelli did a test in a F3 car earlier this year I was around the Silverstone area so spoke to some of the engineers who ran him that day. And two of the engineers I spoke to said the exact same thing on two independent phone calls: This kid is the best kid we’ve seen in an F3 car since Max Verstappen.

“But then you look at his F2 results from the first half of the year and you go ‘hang on a second, what’s all the fuss about?'”

The full list of F1 2025 rookies includes Antonelli, Bearman, Bortoleto, Hadjar, Lawson and Jack Doohan.

Read next: George Russell plans ‘key’ Bottas meeting as Ferrari engine catches eyes

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