F1 News
Easier for Antonelli to get to F1's level? 'We didn't have that back then'
17-year-old Andrea Kimi Antonelli is tipped to receive a seat already in 2025, but if that eventually does not happen, he is already eligible to drive thanks to a special rule created for him and other young talents. Former F1 driver Johnny Herbert believes technology is one of the reasons why the Italian driver could improve so much already.
Former Formula One Grand Prix winner Johnny Herbert joined the competition in 1989, when he was 24-years-old. The Briton thinks that with technology, Antonelli's skills are already better than his or Max Verstappen's were when they were 17-years-old. "Their skill set at 17 is way beyond mine at the same age and I’d say way beyond even Max because the technology is completely different. All I had was a mobile phone! Data was so basic – we had four different lines – a throttle trace, a speed trace, a brake trace and a cornering trace," Herbert wrote in his column on Lord Ping.
Max Verstappen joined Formula One in 2014, also at the age of 17, and to this day, he is the youngest driver to ever participate in a F1 Grand Prix, and also the youngest to win one, after he won the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix. With Antonelli joining, there would be another teenager on the grid, as the Italian skipped F3 and if he gets a seat come 2025, he would also only spend a season in F2. "Antonelli hasn’t had the strongest F2 season and hasn’t come in and blown people away as Max and Lewis did for instance. Now he has to prove it," Herbert underlined.
Antonelli, his teammate in F2 at Prema, Oliver Bearman, or even another teenage sensation, Arvin Lindblad joining would mean Formula One is also joining in on a common trend in global sports, as elsewhere, youngsters are also making huge steps, as Luke Littler took the darting scene by storm, and 16-year-old Lamine Yamal is also playing at this year's European Championship.