Karun Chandhok shares Max Verstappen claim F3 engineers made about Kimi Antonelli

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Karun Chandhok has shared an ‘incredible’ Max Verstappen comparison he heard regarding Mercedes youngster Andrea Kimi Antonelli.

17-year-old prodigy Antonelli is believed to be in contention to replace Lewis Hamilton at the Silver Arrows for what would be his rookie year.

And Sky Sports F1 pundit Chandhok has provided an insight into the excitement around the Italian.

Antonelli has already won five single-seater titles in his fledgling career, including the Formula Regional Europe and Middle East Championships.

This season, he’s racing in Formula 2 with Prema alongside Oliver Bearman, who was called up by Ferrari to replace an unwell Carlos Sainz at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

Antonelli only picked up one point at round one in Bahrain but tacked 11 more onto his tally with a pair of sixth-place finishes in Jeddah.

Karun Chandhok shares Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Max Verstappen comparison

Writing in his column for The Intercooler, Chandhok recalled his experience of watching Antonelli at a private F3 test.

He says some of the engineers in his garage that day said they hadn’t seen lap times so impressive since Max Verstappen.

Antonelli was apparently as much as seven seconds faster as some of his competitors during the early wet running.

He wrote: “My only personal experience of Kimi came at a recent private test at Silverstone in some older F3 cars.

“I spoke with some of the engineers who ran him on that day who were waxing lyrical about him being ‘the best kid they’ve seen in an F3 car since Verstappen’.

“When the track was wet early on in the day, he was seven seconds faster than the other drivers, pretty incredible considering it was his first day at Silverstone!”

Will Antonelli replace Lewis Hamilton?

Mercedes clearly rate Antonelli very highly, with Ted Kravitz revealing that they regard him as the next Charles Leclerc, they do have some more experienced options too.

Sainz, who will make way for Hamilton at Ferrari, is on the market, while Fernando Alonso is out of contract at Aston Martin at the end of this year.

Toto Wolff personally wants to recruit Verstappen from world champions Red Bull but he understands that it will be extremely difficult to prise him away.

If the Brackley outfit do opt for an older head at this stage, then there’s a possibility that Antonelli will get his F1 break at Williams.

James Vowles, a former Mercedes strategist and the team principal at Grove, is said to rate him very highly.

Much will depend, of course, on how Antonelli performs at F2 level for the remainder of the season.