Why Lewis Hamilton is driving slightly damaged car at Mexico City Grand Prix thanks to Kimi Antonelli

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Mercedes offered a glimpse of their 2025 driver line-up in first practice for the Mexico City Grand Prix on Friday. Kimi Antonelli was back in the car in place of Lewis Hamilton.

Antonelli made his FP1 debut for the team at Monza, driving George Russell’s car. He will become the third-youngest driver in F1 history when he succeeds Hamilton next year.

The teenager had crashed just 10 minutes into his Italy outing, and appeared markedly more cautious here. Antonelli wound up 12th fastest, 1.2 seconds off Russell’s leading pace.

The session was disrupted by two red flags, one of which stemmed from an incident involving Antonelli’s F2 teammate, Oliver Bearman. An unfortunate collision with Alex Albon sent the Williams into the barriers and left Bearman’s Ferrari stricken on track.

Still, Antonelli was able to complete 19 valuable laps ahead of his full debut in March. Mercedes know he has the speed after an extensive private testing programme, but they will want to see consistency and stability.

His focus now switches back to Formula 2 for the remainder of the season. With two rounds to go in Qatar and Abu Dhabi, he’s sixth in the championship.

Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes floor not in peak condition after Kimi Antonelli moment at Mexico GP

The first red flag in FP1 was caused by debris on the run to turn one. Race control stopped the session so that a marshal could run onto the track and retrieve it safely.

But that came too late to prevent Antonelli running over it in his Mercedes. This caused damage to his floor, which Auto Motor und Sport’s Tobi Gruener says cost him around 0.25 seconds per lap.

Gruener says that Mercedes were able to repair the floor before Hamilton returned to the car in FP2. However, because it’s a new part, they don’t yet have a spare.

Mercedes admit the patched-up underbody won’t perform as well as a replacement. Hamilton was already on the back foot heading into Saturday because he barely had the chance to run 2024 tyres in FP2 amid a Pirelli test.

Could George Russell’s heighten Mercedes’ cost-cap issues after crash?

Hamilton is looking to recover from a miserable weekend in Austin. He spun out – something that hasn’t happened for 15 years – just three laps into the race.

After a Q1 exit, he’d urged his team to overhaul his car’s set-up, even if it meant a pit-lane start. But Mercedes cited cost-cap issues as they kept him on the starting grid instead.

In theory, it would have been an ideal moment to take a new engine given the minimal impact of any penalty. However, teams can only write off the cost if their previous power unit is damaged.

On Friday, Russell crashed for the second consecutive weekend, hitting the TECPRO hard in the middle sector. That means another extensive repair job for his team, further stretching their budget.