Oliver Bearman makes Kimi Antonelli feelings clear after year as F2 team-mates

Ferrari junior driver Oliver Bearman and Mercedes starlet Kimi Antonelli are two of several inexperienced young racers who will feature on the Formula 1 grid in 2025

Oliver Bearman has backed his “dear friend” Kimi Antonelli to shine for Mercedes in Lewis Hamilton’s stead.

Both teenagers will feature on the 2025 Formula 1 grid. Brit Bearman’s impressive cameo for Ferrari in March landed him a seat with customer team Haas while Antonelli is the heir to Hamilton’s Silver Arrows throne.

The pressure will be on the latter in particular to perform given the level of hype surrounding the young Italian. But even though they will be rivals in the future, Bearman hopes to see his Formula 2 team-mate grab the opportunity with both hands.

“Kimi is a very fast driver, that’s for sure,” the Brit told AutoRacer. He’s also a good guy, I consider him a dear friend and I’m happy that we’ll be together in F1.”

Though he will race for Haas, Bearman remains a member of the Ferrari academy and will be reserve driver to Hamilton and Charles Leclerc. The Scuderia hope he can one day take over from Hamilton, who will be 40 by the time he first races in red and who is in the twilight of his glittering F1 career.

And that is a long-term ambition that Bearman already has one eye on achieving. He added: “Growing up and racing for Ferrari has been the greatest pride of my career. I hope to wear the red again very soon.”

In contrast, Antonelli doesn’t need to work his way up from one of the smaller outfits on the grid into a competitive race seat. The 18-year-old has been shown immense trust by Toto Wolff through the decision to place him straight into Hamilton’s vacant Mercedes seat, rather than blooding him in F1 with a customer team.

As a result, the Austrian knows there will most likely be some difficult moments in Antonelli’s debut season where his inexperience in F1 machinery plays a part. Regardless, he is still convinced promoting him straight into the seat is the right call so that Antonelli and George Russell will have had a season working together heading into 2026 and a new set of regulations.

He said: “I think the opportunity is there to fight for victories, and if you can do that, you will fight for the championship. George will settle in as the leading and senior driver, and Kimi is going to learn, and sometimes we will tear our hair out, and other times, we will see moments of brilliance. But it is going to be a year of managing expectations for Kimi and preparing our driver line-up for 2026.

“When you look at the wins this year, Red Bull’s year was defined by victories at the beginning of the year, but you will have better data if you look from half the year with four teams really close. McLaren won six, Ferrari five, us four and Red Bull [nine]. I would love to be in the fight with the other teams, we’d love to compete for victories on merit, but it is not a given, it is absolutely something we need to fight for.”