Lewis Hamilton has issued a glowing Kimi Antonelli verdict while also joking about the 19-year-old replacing him at Mercedes. The Italian came in for Ferrari-bound Hamilton for the 2025 season and has continued in the role for the upcoming campaign alongside title-favourite George Russell.

The latter won in Melbourne last weekend and looked set to be P1 in Shanghai on Sunday but managed to get just one lap due to mechnical issues during the final qualifying session. Antonelli meanwhile, had two attempts and managed to just edge out his team-mate to become the youngest ever Formula One driver to secure a pole position.

Hamilton completes the top three for Sunday’s race and later made his feelings clear on Antonelli. At a press conference, he said: “I have to say big congratulations to this big lad here. To Kimi, its an amazing achievement, to come into [Mercedes]… and he took my seat and he hit it hard from the get go. So it’s just really great to see him progressing and he really deserves it.”

Antonelli came second last Sunday in Melbourne but has the chance to go one better after taking advantage of Russell’s problems. The 28-year-old stopped dead on the track and initially failed to restart the car before then having problems shifting gears on his way back to the Mercedes garage.

Toto Wolff later revealed what the issues was for Russell with the Mercedes Team Principal surprised he even went out and put in a time during Q3. He said: “It looks like it’s electrical, we had to power cycle the car three times, switching it on and off, until on the third time it went.

“I didn’t think it was going out but, to my surprise, we still did the lap. Let’s see how they get away from the start – the Ferraris will be pushing like crazy tomorrow, like they did today and in Melbourne. It’s certainly going to be entertaining.”

Despite Russell’s issues, Antonelli was clearly delighted by his performance and he later revealed some of the issues he encountered during Saturday’s sessions. He said: “For the first time in a long time in a qualifying session, I felt comfortable to push more and more after every set of tyres.

“It was very weird in Q2, the amount of understeer that appeared in the car and we couldn’t fix it. I struggled a little bit there and had to make a lot of adjustments during the lap, just to help the balance, but it was a clean lap.

“Even if George had a second set, it would have been fairly close between us two. I’m happy with the result and there’s a big opportunity ahead tomorrow.”