The super consultant Red Bull seems to regret the choice of not having focused on Andrea Kimi Antonelli, a very young driver who grew up under the wing of Toto Wolff and Mercedes, which is preparing to welcome him into the official team from 2025. Helmut Marko interviewed in the podcast Inside Line F1 talked about Kimi Antonelli's journey, how he moved away from Ferrari to arrive at Mercedes, which bet everything on him as Red Bull did at the time with Max Verstappen.
Marko admits: “Antonelli wasn’t on our radar”
During the interview, Marko revealed that Antonelli had not been taken into consideration when Red Bull was evaluating young drivers. “It wasn't on our radar,” Marko said.. An admission that has a certain weight if said by Marko, one of the main architects of Max Verstappen's success, after having identified him and launched him into the Formula 1 panorama when he was still a teenager. It is evident that this time Mercedes has been able to move better, demonstrating an intuition that Red Bull, and even Ferrari, have not had. Toto Wolff's decision to bet on Antonelli, despite his young age, showed a strategic vision that now seems to be paying dividends.
A lesson for the future
Marko praised Mercedes' courage, stressing how important it is to trust young talents without hesitation. “If someone has talent, put them in the car,” he said, implicitly acknowledging that the Brackley team's choice could prove to be a winning one, just as Red Bull's gamble on Verstappen was. This weekend in Monza, Antonelli is expected to be officially announced as a Mercedes driver from 2025, a move that would confirm the wisdom of Wolff's choice and, at the same time, serve as a lesson for those, like Marko, who did not jump at the chance to sign one of the most promising talents of his generation.
