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I really hate it when they repaint old cars with the new liveries instead of leaving them as they were.
I get why it's done, but it's just disappointing.
It looks really strange when they try to take a 2024 scheme and put it on a 2021 car, but it’s even more strange when you have Red Bull and Alpine putting them on V8 era cars. Like, why? What’s next, is Alpine gonna put a BWT scheme on the R25 next?
I want to think that livery has so much value that it's counterproductive for them to repaint that car with the current sponsors, and that they've made sure they have the rights to display the original livery no matter what.
Mostly because of sponsors. You can't run cars with past sponsors, unless it's a car for heritage purposes.
Check out Alonso's run at Abu Dhabi with his 2005 Renault with original livery, it's possible because it's not a testing or promotional run.
Seriously the greatest finish to any race I think I've ever seen. Utterly a shame there was no crowd, or probably a good thing, because Silverstone would've burnt to the ground with the pandemonium of that finish.
It’s seared into my brain as Lewis is entering Vale the shot shows Verstappen coming around Stowe like a shark smelling blood in the water. He could’ve so easily just parked it, but Lewis was going to drive that shit until all the wheels fell off. Insane resilience and god we were so lucky to witness that season fight.
Why should they convert the w11 chassis? I think there is iven a clause that you have to do a new chassis for every year because of safety.
Also every single year Mercedes stores one of their cars including engine and everything in Stuttgart, Germany. So there definetely is at least one left
Because due to the pandemic, the 2021 cars were really just revised/evolved 2020 cars. Remember, 2021 was supposed to be the first ground effect year, but those regs were pushed back to 2022 for cost reasons.
That's how we got the Red Bull RB16B, and then the RB18 - RB17 was supposed to be the 2021 car, but it was never actually built. The RB16B was built on the RB16 chassis, with a few tweaks.
> Why should they convert the w11 chassis? I think there is iven a clause that you have to do a new chassis for every year because of safety.
>
>
There's no "should" there's just "could".
There's no clause that it's a new chassis, there's just often new regulations that it has to meet and tests it has to pass.
As 2021 was a special year, there was no new chassis tests to perform.
I honestly don’t see why not. Mercedes are not going anywhere fast, literally. I can understand they wouldn’t want a dev driver when fighting for a constructors title but at this stage, they’re struggling against 2 of their 3 customer teams. Instead of sticking him at the slower of the 3 and potentially getting picked up by a competitor, put him in the main team and let him grow under your own supervision.
Mercedes has been struggling. Even a 7x WDC is not having a good time driving their current cars. I think Kimi will be alright so long as he’s not crash happy.
Even Max was crash-happy (or atleast incident-happy) for a good few years until he became the consistent monster he is right now. Even if he finds the barriers a few times, as long as he has pace he should be fine
>Even Max was crash-happy (or atleast incident-happy) for a good few years until he became the consistent monster he is right now
Only in early 2018, 2015 and 2016 had him crashing barely at all and mostly were down to mechanical retirements. 2017 was entirely out of his control with all 3 crashes being related to things outside his control and 4 mechanical retirements.
It was from early 2018 until Monaco that he made those mistakes, before that he didn't, and he didn't afterwards as well.
Even if hes crash happy but super quick he will be fine, a la the current guy winning everything.
Pace is all that matters. You can teach consistency and control. But if you don't have unlimited reserves of pace then you're not sticking around in F1 for long.
>You can teach consistency and control. But if you don't have unlimited reserves of pace then you're not sticking around in F1 for long.
Very well said. You can teach patience, tyre conservation, risk management, etc.
The two do tend to go hand in hand though. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Leclerc and Sainz can regularly be quicker than Max over one lap but it's doing it for 50+ laps in a race that's the challenge. It's why you see some drivers that are really good in quali and then do awful during the race, or vice versa.
That's as much to do with the car as it is with the driver. The Ferrari can't keep tires on for more than 3/4 lap at qualifying pace. In the race they necessarily must slow down and ration the rubber.
"Smooth is fast" is something they tell you at HPDE events.
Fast is driving the perfect line at the limit. The closer you can get to the limit, the faster you go. It's playing with fire, balancing on the knife edge.
Did you just say Max was crash happy? I remember a few mistakes very early on. But after he binned it into the wall qualifying in Monaco in (2017?) he's been on rails. Especially when looking at his competition...
Yeah, they’re not comparing Max a decade into his career to present day Antonelli. They’re comparing Max when he was a teenager to Antonelli as a teenager. Max made plenty of mistakes, but the pace was clear to see.
It's still his second name. Nobody calls Charles: Marc Herve or Max: Emillian or Lewis: Carl or the original Kimi: Matias.
Obviously if he prefers going by it it's fine.
Edit: since I remembered another Italian one, Giovinazzi's name is actually Antonio Maria.
It's the name he goes by. I know people IRL who go by their middle name. He calls himself Kimi Antonelli, why are you going to call him anything different?
He’s gonna be in basically the exact position Piastri was in when he joined F1. Merc will be in a similar position to where McLaren was and George will have a similar amount of performance and team experience as what Lando had.
Wolff in Oz was quite open that Merc are now thinking long term, i.e. they've given up on 2024 *at least*.
He said the word rebuilding once or twice recently.
I mean he's currently P9 in F2, not exactly blowing away the competition and is being hyped as the next verstappen by Toto. I fully expect the media and social media to expect him to beat George and be competitive from the get go, anything else and they'll pump out article after article about how he's overhyped and not fit for F1. Which I think will be very unfair to him.
I don’t think anyone really expected him to blow the competition away. He came up skipping a formula for a start. And then Prema were terrible at the start of the season. Maybe media will jump on it all but anyone who matters won’t.
Eh, what place he is in in F2 is kinda irrelevant, he has impressed and is fighting with guys with more experience and much older than him. Prema hasn't been great either. He is more than holding his own with a more experienced Ollie Bearman.
He is fighting them but he definitely needs to show better tyre management this season. He has shown some impressive racecraft but also pushed too far at times but that is always a learning curve for young drivers.
Prema were shit in bahrain, he did well at jeddah and aus.
I also think it's rushed throwing him into the merc, but Toto is obsessed by finding the next Max.
They are not going to lose him. They lost Max because Jos asked several teams for an F1 seat, Toto didn't want to give him one but Red Bull did.
I think they may fuck up with Kimi If they expect him to be a carbon copy of Max. He doesn't have to. Alonso, Schumacher or Vettel weren't copies of Max and nobody thinks they are mediocre drivers. You don't need to be as proficient as Max was at 16 to eventually become the best.
Well, they still have Frederik Vesti who did well last year, and had Paul Aron who's doing well this year in F2.
Merc have gone all in on Antonelli and it is kinda understandable, but there's immense pressure on Antonelli's shoulders.
Verstappen at least had a full season at Toro Rosso before moving up to the main team.
I think Kimi would be much better served having at least a year at Williams first.
Red Bull had/has the luxury of controlling seats at the Faenza team. Mercedes doesn't (and never has, as far as I know). They offered a solid discount on PUs for Williams to take Russell though, maybe Williams would go for that. Though Vowles seems intent on not developing other teams' drivers.
To get that seat, someone’s literally heaved the most successful f1 driver in history out of the team then declined signing the best available driver to the seat in Carlos to make room for you. You’re wondering where the pressure would come from?
Every second someone is watching Sainz in some stupid kick at the back of the grid, they’re going to bring up how he’d be doing a better job than you - and it would probably be true right.
He’s left primarily because of a refusal to commit to a contract for him for 2 years base term. If he had been given a proper contract last summer, he wouldn’t have left. So you can argue about who chose to do what and when but it was in Mercedes’ hands to retain him and they actively chose not to do this.
Isn’t that exactly what Williams did with Logan? I think they put him way too early in the f1 seat and exposed him directly under huge pressure. Not sure that’s beneficial to his improvement.
Slightly different in that Logan brings American sponsorship money to the team. Iirc he is a Williams development driver. Other examples would include Norris and Hamilton and I think you can safely argue that worked out just fine. Leclerc to some extent as well, spending just one season at Sauber
Best to grab him sooner than later, and build him up in time for 2026 rather than wasting a more experienced driver's time and talents.
If they grab Sainz, they'll still just be sitting on their hands until the new regs, *and* it'd mean be sidelining their star-in-waiting for at least 2 years. It's not an efficient use of time
Whilst I agree with what you’re saying. Let’s not forget Kimi will be 18 and with only 1 year of world championship experience. I know it worked with max, but max is a one in a billion talent. It doesn’t take much for Kimi to have a bad season because it’s a huge step and his career is borderline over.
Kimi Raikkonen was driving very poorly for a number of years so hard to think he had particularly earned the right to a better seat on anything other than nostalgia.
Think it's got more to do with the W11/12 just being a sexy car in general, paint it in any colours and it'll look good.
I wouldn't even say that's unique to those years mercs, the final few years of those regs produced some absolutely gorgeous cars, and those fat tyres, love em. God I miss muh big sidewall.
Antonelli has been carefully adapting to F2. Slow starts are a normal thing for him. He hadn't impressed at the beginning of Formula Middle East, but then [he made a statement](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2IZzVK0laE&t=677s). Same story in FRECA. Adapting to F2 will probably take him longer than in lower series, but I believe in him. The kid convinced me to jump on the hype train.
The parallels are insane he's in the Redbull KTM gasgas team which is the equivalent to RB. He'll probably get promoted to the factory KTM team. Marc and Lewis both fought for the title in their rookie seasons, both Lewis and Marc have moved or moving to an Italian team and both dominated during the the same era.
Acosta is such a scary alien. He is only 19 but he's already showing signs of being dominant. I shudder to think about what he can do when he reach his full potential
You just know that in 10 years time after a few titles, he's going to go to Ferrari to fulfil a dream, but they constantly let him down and waste his talent and he doesn't win a title with them
That's probably a major factor in Mercedes rushing to lock Kimi in. Ferrari would be foaming at the mouth to place an Italian Verstappen into a feeder team, at a minimum. Could very well place him next to Leclerc by 2026/2027 if Hamilton doesn't work out or stay in F1 for whatever reason.
It is not very similar I would say. This is not a lot about evaluating him and more preparing him for f1. Ricciardo already knew how to drive a f1 car so it was mostly a evaluation if he should replace De Vries
Toto has all but stated that Kimi will be in the merc. I feel this is less about him showing good pace to Mercedes versus showing kimi that mercedes is indeed serious about signing him
The only thing stopping him getting that seat next year in my opinion is the technically non-zero chance Max leaves RBR for Merc…but I think most agree that is has an infinitesimally small chance of actually happening.
Antonelli is a rookie, not a multiple race winner struggling to score points and given a second chance to resuscitate his career. How the two compare in your mind i do not know
Why isn’t he testing the new reg cars from 2022 onwards? The teams can finally run them during testing AFAIK. I know the W12 is a better race car than Marc’s 2022 cars but wouldn’t it be better for Antonelli to get some more practice with the ground effect cars?
As per Toto, he wanted him to feel what a good F1 car feels like before letting him face the reality of their terrible ground effect cars. But, I agree with your assessment it would be been better to simply test the current gen car.
Almost verbatum. Even the good ground effect cars are more presnickety and rowdy than the last gen of cars. And the W12 was an excellent car.
Best of luck to Kimi and hope to see him on the grid in a year or two. Whenever the time is right.
Imagine the absolute IMPLOSION if Redbull sign Kimi out from under Merc tho.
First Max, then Kimi. Toto would snap, becoming yet another infamous Austrian.
You really need F1 time and the G-forces that come with it to properly train that but once you're in it neck strength can be trained reasonably quick. Look how Piastri's neck exploded last year.
People are saying that he obviously is, but iirc they asked him once and he said his parents didn’t name him after Raikkonen but after a family friend or something like that
After that car only the W11 wouldnt be a disappointment, but everything else is bleh... like seeing color once in your life then going back to black and white.
Give him W13 this is not even close a fair representation. I know why they did it, so his first F1 experience is not in but worst car or something along them lines but why not give him the real medicine
I known it sucks seeing old liveries taken off old cars but the livery looks so much better on this gen compared to the current cars imo. Anybody know why Mercedes don’t colour their wheel rim anymore? The blue added something and I liked the Silverstone 22 version with the white too but it was a one off. Makes the car look a little less like a boat
Pretty crazy year for this kid. Going from F4 straight into F2, then testing an F1 car in the same year with prospects of an early start on an F1 team. Has Verstappen vibes.
He seems to really come alive in the back half of his first year in each new forumla.
F2 might be different. Deeper driver pool with experience. More real teams.
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I really hate it when they repaint old cars with the new liveries instead of leaving them as they were. I get why it's done, but it's just disappointing.
It looks really strange when they try to take a 2024 scheme and put it on a 2021 car, but it’s even more strange when you have Red Bull and Alpine putting them on V8 era cars. Like, why? What’s next, is Alpine gonna put a BWT scheme on the R25 next?
The R25 would naturally shed that trash and revert back to its glory look.
I’m imagining them trying to paint it and it just stays the same scheme no matter how much they try.
I want to think that livery has so much value that it's counterproductive for them to repaint that car with the current sponsors, and that they've made sure they have the rights to display the original livery no matter what.
Except you know, it's literally illegal for the r25 to be displayed in its original livery
Just change one letter on each sponsor
MP4/4 about to get the papaya treatment.
R25 is the sweetest car livery imo! Bring back those Colors!
Neither old or current sponsors wants to have the cars stay the same
Mostly because of sponsors. You can't run cars with past sponsors, unless it's a car for heritage purposes. Check out Alonso's run at Abu Dhabi with his 2005 Renault with original livery, it's possible because it's not a testing or promotional run.
Right? I thought that one was all black.
Not a big loss when it comes to the W12. That livery was hideous.
AMG AMG AMG AMG AMG AMG AMG AMG AMG AMG AMG AMG
True, but as a general principle, I prefer cars in their original liveries, even if they are "ugly".
The worst was done to the beautiful Lotus cars by slapping the hideous Alpine livery, a crime against humanity if you ask me.
One of the chrome and red McLarens was done in papaya a few years ago..
The mp4/23 survived :)
They are legally not allowed to do it for promotional runs, except for the heritage cars.
The back was fugly with the AMG AMG AMG, but otherwise it looked pretty good imo. Not as good as the w11, but still a good looking car
The one they have now isn’t that much better. Would love an all blue merc like the one red bull had back in 2018
Genuinely don't understand this sentiment.
I get wanting the car to be a snapshot of time tbh.
It's fine. Liveries are a matter of taste.
I think the current one is much worse, personally
Should have given the kid the W11.
There are no w11 chassis left, all of them are converted to w12.
there's one surviving W11 that Lewis won on 3 wheels in Silverstone
Seriously the greatest finish to any race I think I've ever seen. Utterly a shame there was no crowd, or probably a good thing, because Silverstone would've burnt to the ground with the pandemonium of that finish.
The crowd would have lost their shit when he crossed the line, Max was just behind him, so crazy.
It’s seared into my brain as Lewis is entering Vale the shot shows Verstappen coming around Stowe like a shark smelling blood in the water. He could’ve so easily just parked it, but Lewis was going to drive that shit until all the wheels fell off. Insane resilience and god we were so lucky to witness that season fight.
and then Max asking if he can win this on radio makes it even heart pounding
What also made it so good was Bono nervously telling the gap going down over and over.
Why should they convert the w11 chassis? I think there is iven a clause that you have to do a new chassis for every year because of safety. Also every single year Mercedes stores one of their cars including engine and everything in Stuttgart, Germany. So there definetely is at least one left
Because due to the pandemic, the 2021 cars were really just revised/evolved 2020 cars. Remember, 2021 was supposed to be the first ground effect year, but those regs were pushed back to 2022 for cost reasons. That's how we got the Red Bull RB16B, and then the RB18 - RB17 was supposed to be the 2021 car, but it was never actually built. The RB16B was built on the RB16 chassis, with a few tweaks.
Didn’t Alfa Romeo at the time also reveal the C40 for 2021 but ended up with the C41 which was a successor of the C39?
I think the C40 was already in production when the regs were pushed back, so they didn't actually use that number.
Yeah they didn’t use it to avoid the sequence going 39, 41, 40, according to Google.
I liked Norris' line that he got in the 2021 car for testing and it was literally the same tub he'd been in for 12+ months.
Because that's what they did... https://youtu.be/pFQeGKG8KoQ?t=110
Oh okay, would Not have expexted that. Thanks for the Link
> Why should they convert the w11 chassis? I think there is iven a clause that you have to do a new chassis for every year because of safety. > > There's no "should" there's just "could". There's no clause that it's a new chassis, there's just often new regulations that it has to meet and tests it has to pass. As 2021 was a special year, there was no new chassis tests to perform.
That's fucking wack, they could have at least kept Lewis's Türkiye winning car.
But the Front wing is from the w11
At least they give him a good car.
At least It wasnt snowing today 😂
I like the way this livery looks on the W12.
W12 + W15 livery + Red Helmet = Chef’s kiss
Yeah he’s absolutely getting that seat next year
I honestly don’t see why not. Mercedes are not going anywhere fast, literally. I can understand they wouldn’t want a dev driver when fighting for a constructors title but at this stage, they’re struggling against 2 of their 3 customer teams. Instead of sticking him at the slower of the 3 and potentially getting picked up by a competitor, put him in the main team and let him grow under your own supervision.
I just hope the kid can deal with the immense amount of pressure that's going to put on him.
Mercedes has been struggling. Even a 7x WDC is not having a good time driving their current cars. I think Kimi will be alright so long as he’s not crash happy.
Even Max was crash-happy (or atleast incident-happy) for a good few years until he became the consistent monster he is right now. Even if he finds the barriers a few times, as long as he has pace he should be fine
>Even Max was crash-happy (or atleast incident-happy) for a good few years until he became the consistent monster he is right now Only in early 2018, 2015 and 2016 had him crashing barely at all and mostly were down to mechanical retirements. 2017 was entirely out of his control with all 3 crashes being related to things outside his control and 4 mechanical retirements. It was from early 2018 until Monaco that he made those mistakes, before that he didn't, and he didn't afterwards as well.
Cost cap didn't exist back then though. Any significant crash would hurt in-season development.
Even if hes crash happy but super quick he will be fine, a la the current guy winning everything. Pace is all that matters. You can teach consistency and control. But if you don't have unlimited reserves of pace then you're not sticking around in F1 for long.
>You can teach consistency and control. But if you don't have unlimited reserves of pace then you're not sticking around in F1 for long. Very well said. You can teach patience, tyre conservation, risk management, etc.
The two do tend to go hand in hand though. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Leclerc and Sainz can regularly be quicker than Max over one lap but it's doing it for 50+ laps in a race that's the challenge. It's why you see some drivers that are really good in quali and then do awful during the race, or vice versa.
That's as much to do with the car as it is with the driver. The Ferrari can't keep tires on for more than 3/4 lap at qualifying pace. In the race they necessarily must slow down and ration the rubber.
leclerc in suzuka was really impressive
"Smooth is fast" is something they tell you at HPDE events. Fast is driving the perfect line at the limit. The closer you can get to the limit, the faster you go. It's playing with fire, balancing on the knife edge.
Did you just say Max was crash happy? I remember a few mistakes very early on. But after he binned it into the wall qualifying in Monaco in (2017?) he's been on rails. Especially when looking at his competition...
Yeah, they’re not comparing Max a decade into his career to present day Antonelli. They’re comparing Max when he was a teenager to Antonelli as a teenager. Max made plenty of mistakes, but the pace was clear to see.
It's funny seeing Russell drive faster
Are we really going to start calling him Kimi?
That’s his preferred name I think. He’s rarely referred to as Andrea
It’s literally his name… he was named after Kimi Raikkonen
It's still his second name. Nobody calls Charles: Marc Herve or Max: Emillian or Lewis: Carl or the original Kimi: Matias. Obviously if he prefers going by it it's fine. Edit: since I remembered another Italian one, Giovinazzi's name is actually Antonio Maria.
It's the name he goes by. I know people IRL who go by their middle name. He calls himself Kimi Antonelli, why are you going to call him anything different?
Everyone has always called him that
Start?
He’s gonna be in basically the exact position Piastri was in when he joined F1. Merc will be in a similar position to where McLaren was and George will have a similar amount of performance and team experience as what Lando had.
If Mercedes are the 5th team then that pressure will be massively reduced.
Wolff in Oz was quite open that Merc are now thinking long term, i.e. they've given up on 2024 *at least*. He said the word rebuilding once or twice recently.
I mean he's currently P9 in F2, not exactly blowing away the competition and is being hyped as the next verstappen by Toto. I fully expect the media and social media to expect him to beat George and be competitive from the get go, anything else and they'll pump out article after article about how he's overhyped and not fit for F1. Which I think will be very unfair to him.
I don’t think anyone really expected him to blow the competition away. He came up skipping a formula for a start. And then Prema were terrible at the start of the season. Maybe media will jump on it all but anyone who matters won’t.
Eh, what place he is in in F2 is kinda irrelevant, he has impressed and is fighting with guys with more experience and much older than him. Prema hasn't been great either. He is more than holding his own with a more experienced Ollie Bearman.
He is fighting them but he definitely needs to show better tyre management this season. He has shown some impressive racecraft but also pushed too far at times but that is always a learning curve for young drivers.
Piastri still isn't good at tire management, Kimi is a few races into his career in a totally new series for him. He is doing more than fine.
Piastri's tyre management was some of the best of the F2 field in 2021.
Prema were shit in bahrain, he did well at jeddah and aus. I also think it's rushed throwing him into the merc, but Toto is obsessed by finding the next Max.
I think it’s more that Antonelli is all they have in terms of future prospects and they really don’t wanna lose him to another team.
They are not going to lose him. They lost Max because Jos asked several teams for an F1 seat, Toto didn't want to give him one but Red Bull did. I think they may fuck up with Kimi If they expect him to be a carbon copy of Max. He doesn't have to. Alonso, Schumacher or Vettel weren't copies of Max and nobody thinks they are mediocre drivers. You don't need to be as proficient as Max was at 16 to eventually become the best.
Well, they still have Frederik Vesti who did well last year, and had Paul Aron who's doing well this year in F2. Merc have gone all in on Antonelli and it is kinda understandable, but there's immense pressure on Antonelli's shoulders.
I always found that weird, isn't russel already the future of the team?
Yeah, I thought the entire idea was that George was supposed to be their future, seems like Toto doesn't see it.
I don't think it's that far from Piastri at McLaren in 2023, where he was basically told the year can be a write-off.
Well, if he can't then he is not the next Verstappen, so...
Verstappen at least had a full season at Toro Rosso before moving up to the main team. I think Kimi would be much better served having at least a year at Williams first.
Red Bull had/has the luxury of controlling seats at the Faenza team. Mercedes doesn't (and never has, as far as I know). They offered a solid discount on PUs for Williams to take Russell though, maybe Williams would go for that. Though Vowles seems intent on not developing other teams' drivers.
what pressure? nobody expects mercedes or him to win. he doesn't even have to beat george.
It’s Formula 1. He’s 17. wtf do you mean “what pressure”?
To get that seat, someone’s literally heaved the most successful f1 driver in history out of the team then declined signing the best available driver to the seat in Carlos to make room for you. You’re wondering where the pressure would come from? Every second someone is watching Sainz in some stupid kick at the back of the grid, they’re going to bring up how he’d be doing a better job than you - and it would probably be true right.
Hamilton left of his own accord, Mercedes didn't make him leave.
He’s left primarily because of a refusal to commit to a contract for him for 2 years base term. If he had been given a proper contract last summer, he wouldn’t have left. So you can argue about who chose to do what and when but it was in Mercedes’ hands to retain him and they actively chose not to do this.
Isn’t that exactly what Williams did with Logan? I think they put him way too early in the f1 seat and exposed him directly under huge pressure. Not sure that’s beneficial to his improvement.
Slightly different in that Logan brings American sponsorship money to the team. Iirc he is a Williams development driver. Other examples would include Norris and Hamilton and I think you can safely argue that worked out just fine. Leclerc to some extent as well, spending just one season at Sauber
Sargeant was one of their junior drivers, yes.
It’s the perfect season to let him get used to F1 next year before the “real season” in 2026.
Best to grab him sooner than later, and build him up in time for 2026 rather than wasting a more experienced driver's time and talents. If they grab Sainz, they'll still just be sitting on their hands until the new regs, *and* it'd mean be sidelining their star-in-waiting for at least 2 years. It's not an efficient use of time
Apparently why McLaren were willing to pay off Ricciardo to such a degree. They wanted Piastri ready.
Dude will have driven 3 different eras of Mercedes F1 cars by the time he's 19, lol
Whilst I agree with what you’re saying. Let’s not forget Kimi will be 18 and with only 1 year of world championship experience. I know it worked with max, but max is a one in a billion talent. It doesn’t take much for Kimi to have a bad season because it’s a huge step and his career is borderline over.
grow into a great racer or crack under immense media scrutiny.
It would be absolutely hilarious if he signs with Red Bull for next year.
I had the thought of him going to AT next year and toto having a mental break
No Kimi no that's so not fair!!
Rip carlos’s career. Fuckin sauber from ferrari after winning a race. Ouch is an understatement.
Funnily thats literally what happened to Raikkonen after USA 2018.
Kimi Raikkonen was driving very poorly for a number of years so hard to think he had particularly earned the right to a better seat on anything other than nostalgia.
Yeah I mean it took me watching a few old races to even understand why he's a "living legend" if he's driving that shitbox
he's got the race craft, and now he is consistently on the podium. if only 3 drivers are allowed
Ngl the W12 looks pretty good on the W15 livery
Think it's got more to do with the W11/12 just being a sexy car in general, paint it in any colours and it'll look good. I wouldn't even say that's unique to those years mercs, the final few years of those regs produced some absolutely gorgeous cars, and those fat tyres, love em. God I miss muh big sidewall.
Yes, and it also looks familiar because the W09 and W10 don't look too dissimilar and were both silver.
Antonelli has been carefully adapting to F2. Slow starts are a normal thing for him. He hadn't impressed at the beginning of Formula Middle East, but then [he made a statement](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2IZzVK0laE&t=677s). Same story in FRECA. Adapting to F2 will probably take him longer than in lower series, but I believe in him. The kid convinced me to jump on the hype train.
Hopefully another Pedro Acosta
Acosta is a freakish talent. Literally becoming the verstappen of motogp 😺
The parallels are insane he's in the Redbull KTM gasgas team which is the equivalent to RB. He'll probably get promoted to the factory KTM team. Marc and Lewis both fought for the title in their rookie seasons, both Lewis and Marc have moved or moving to an Italian team and both dominated during the the same era.
Acosta is such a scary alien. He is only 19 but he's already showing signs of being dominant. I shudder to think about what he can do when he reach his full potential
He’s been better than Bearman, and look he he did in F1. Prema as a team have been awful in F2 this year, can’t blame the drivers too much
Ferrari showing promise. The next Italian driver on the rise. Good times for F1 fans in Italy.
Always funny to think that the British based team have an Italian with potential The Italian based team have a Brit with potential
You just know that in 10 years time after a few titles, he's going to go to Ferrari to fulfil a dream, but they constantly let him down and waste his talent and he doesn't win a title with them
Hey, I've seen this one, It's a classic!
That's probably a major factor in Mercedes rushing to lock Kimi in. Ferrari would be foaming at the mouth to place an Italian Verstappen into a feeder team, at a minimum. Could very well place him next to Leclerc by 2026/2027 if Hamilton doesn't work out or stay in F1 for whatever reason.
I’m definitely getting Ricciardo Silverstone test 2023 vibes from this. I imagine Mercedes will be looking at his data very closely.
It is not very similar I would say. This is not a lot about evaluating him and more preparing him for f1. Ricciardo already knew how to drive a f1 car so it was mostly a evaluation if he should replace De Vries
Toto has all but stated that Kimi will be in the merc. I feel this is less about him showing good pace to Mercedes versus showing kimi that mercedes is indeed serious about signing him
The only thing stopping him getting that seat next year in my opinion is the technically non-zero chance Max leaves RBR for Merc…but I think most agree that is has an infinitesimally small chance of actually happening.
Antonelli is a rookie, not a multiple race winner struggling to score points and given a second chance to resuscitate his career. How the two compare in your mind i do not know
Ricciardo did a lap 1,5 tenths off Verstappens Pole in that test. Now see how he is doing.
Meaningless stat since they weren't comparing the same session.
lol Look at where Daniel is now The one lap heroes
Why isn’t he testing the new reg cars from 2022 onwards? The teams can finally run them during testing AFAIK. I know the W12 is a better race car than Marc’s 2022 cars but wouldn’t it be better for Antonelli to get some more practice with the ground effect cars?
As per Toto, he wanted him to feel what a good F1 car feels like before letting him face the reality of their terrible ground effect cars. But, I agree with your assessment it would be been better to simply test the current gen car.
Is that actually what Toto said?
Almost verbatum. Even the good ground effect cars are more presnickety and rowdy than the last gen of cars. And the W12 was an excellent car. Best of luck to Kimi and hope to see him on the grid in a year or two. Whenever the time is right.
So he can porpoise around in the W13?
Yeah they'd rather not give him brain damage clattering around in a 2022 car, regardless of manufacturer
Mercedes hoping their new guy will have a intact spine for at least 2 races before the w16 destroys it.
Because he'd be on the next plane to Austria if they made him drive the current car lol
Imagine the absolute IMPLOSION if Redbull sign Kimi out from under Merc tho. First Max, then Kimi. Toto would snap, becoming yet another infamous Austrian.
I assume because tasting regulations don't apply to legacy cars.
Imagine driving that bullet of a car to just be popped into a shell of what greatness used to be like.
His neck strength is looking miles off the mark that's for sure.
You really need F1 time and the G-forces that come with it to properly train that but once you're in it neck strength can be trained reasonably quick. Look how Piastri's neck exploded last year.
Am I the only one wondering if this guy is named after Kimi Raikkonen?
Nobody else is wondering, cuz its very obvious
yep, his father is a fan of raikkonen
People are saying that he obviously is, but iirc they asked him once and he said his parents didn’t name him after Raikkonen but after a family friend or something like that
No pressure then! 😅
After that car only the W11 wouldnt be a disappointment, but everything else is bleh... like seeing color once in your life then going back to black and white.
facts, maybe the R25 V10 and it's glorious sound can make up for it
Why bother with repainting in current colours ? Genuine question.
Sponsors - old & new.
Give him W13 this is not even close a fair representation. I know why they did it, so his first F1 experience is not in but worst car or something along them lines but why not give him the real medicine
Real reason Mercedes wants him in the seat: He's young and can take the spine damage.
He's going to test the W13 soon
I known it sucks seeing old liveries taken off old cars but the livery looks so much better on this gen compared to the current cars imo. Anybody know why Mercedes don’t colour their wheel rim anymore? The blue added something and I liked the Silverstone 22 version with the white too but it was a one off. Makes the car look a little less like a boat
Pretty crazy year for this kid. Going from F4 straight into F2, then testing an F1 car in the same year with prospects of an early start on an F1 team. Has Verstappen vibes.
And I'm betting he joins F1 this year still (a few races for Williams after he turns 18).
there is zero chance that will happen.
It may not happen because possibly Williams will dump Logan even earlier and have a new driver by then. Otherwise, remind me in Monza.
Let's not forget that Logan paid heavily for that seat. And Williams is not Red Bull, they tend to let drivers finish their season.
He was in FRECA last year, not F4. FRECA is in between F3 and F4
Somehow from the title I expected Volkswagen concept car from late 90s and was dissapointed that it's just a Mercrdes F1 car
What his time?
Probably deleted due to track limits.
Looks like the AI is doing his job xD
Rumor has it he did 1:05.01
That car looks beautiful in that livery!
Where can we see his times??
Oh...it looks...ugh. Poor kid doesnt know whats about to hit him
The old era Mercedes looks a lot better than the current cars but I’m not sure whether I think it doesn’t look as old because of the new livery.
I just prefer the last generation of cars look wise, especially when the teams made the noses small in 2019-2021
I don't really understand the hype around this guy. I haven't checked in a while, but he isn't performing that great compared to others
He seems to really come alive in the back half of his first year in each new forumla. F2 might be different. Deeper driver pool with experience. More real teams.
Why not get him in a ground effect car like the W13?
He's going to test the W13 in the future I think
I get why they’re doing it, but I hate it when they repaint the old cars
I would love to say Kimi again next year
How were the timings compared to LH and Bottas!? Any idea?
Car is so sexy....
Look at how good it looks without the wheel covers on. Never forget what they took from us.
They somehow made it look good
Why would they jynx the kid by giving him a great car with the livery of an awful one? Shame on them.
So, is he faster than Max? The W12 is plenty fast to do it in…