Toto Wolff makes final decision on Lewis Hamilton replacement as date for announcement set | F1 | Sport

Toto Wolff has reportedly settled on Lewis Hamilton’s replacement with Kimi Antonelli set to team up with George Russell to form Mercedes’ driver line-up in 2025. The deal will be announced at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza.

Antonelli has been heavily linked to the vacant Mercedes seat ever since Fernando Alonso opted against joining the Silver Arrows in favour of committing to Aston Martin long-term. However, Wolff made it clear that while Antonelli was in the picture, Max Verstappen was the first-choice target.

However, when a lever in Verstappen’s contract allowing him to follow Helmut Marko out of the door was removed, Mercedes’ chances of bringing the Dutchman to Brackley in 2025 diminished and Antonelli became the clear frontrunner.

Now, the deal is allegedly done. According to a report from Autosprint, Wolff has settled on Antonelli as Russell’s next Mercedes team-mate, and the signing will be announced at the 17-year-old’s home race in early September.

Questions were asked about Wolff’s unrelenting belief in the Italian’s talent following a challenging star to a rookie Formula Two campaign in which he was expected to fight at the front from the off. Nevertheless, Antonelli kicked on in the middle portion of the season.

A maiden sprint race victory in challenging wet conditions got the monkey off his back at Silverstone, and Antonelli followed that up with an even more memorable drive in the feature race during the following round in Hungary.

Those results swept away any remaining doubts about Antonelli’s pedigree. The Bologna-born starlet now leads Prema Racing colleague Oliver Bearman 87-34 in the intra-team battle as the Italian outfit continue to struggle after an extended spell dominating at the front of F2.

Within the Mercedes camp, there is little doubt that Antonelli is a superstar in the making. Discussing his talent, technical director James Allison said: “He’s just a young, enthusiastic driver. Very, very fast and metronomic in his pace.

“He has not been in an F1 car until recently but made it look like he’d been in one for ages within a lap or two. He came at this generation of cars, the ground effect cars, with an open mind.

“He feels all the same things that you’d expect him to feel, but he’s not sort of polluted by the previous cars. So he just takes them as they are and tells us what he is feeling as weaknesses and strengths. He lets the engineers work to try to improve those things… he looks like a very promising young driver.”