Antonelli and a jump ‘Verstappen-style’ or ‘Stroll-style’
Yesterday the official announcement arrived that Italian motorsport had been awaiting with great interest. In 2024 Andrea Kimi Antonelli he will start in F2 again within the Prema team, with which he won the Italian and German F4 in 2022 and the Formula Regional by Alpine in 2023. The Bolognese born on 25 August 2006 will therefore skip the F3 step also because in In 2024 the new Dallara will make its debut in F2, recalling the ground effect which will return to F1 starting from 2022.
2024 will therefore be a year zero for everyone in the antechamber of F1, an opportunity not to be missed for Mercedes which has included Antonelli in its youth program starting from 2018. The Brackley academy consultant Gwen Lagrue reached by the newspaper The-Race.com explained that the choice to race in the Formula Regional by Alpine in 2023 was made to allow Antonelli to compete in a championship that gave the drivers the opportunity to have more time on the track every weekend compared to F3, which allows only one free practice session before Qualifying and the two Races.
F2 is immediately a significant leap, but after two years in a single-seater following a traditional path, the time has come to definitively put Antonelli under the spotlight and with a test worthy of “swim or drown“ Lagrue added. Antonelli’s arrival in F2 reconnects the threads with other promotions that have left their mark on the path that takes young drivers from karting to F1. “Antonelli’s move to F2 is the biggest bombshell in youth racing since Lance Stroll moved from European Formula 3 to F1 with Williams – he writes The-Race – and, with all due respect to the results achieved by Stroll in the preparatory formulas, the promotion of Antonelli to F2 it’s an earthquake comparable to when Red Bull promised a 16-year-old Max Verstappen an immediate place in F1“.
“When Antonelli debuts in F2 he will be a month younger than when Verstappen made his F1 debut in Australia in 2015 – adds the digital newspaper which sees affinity between the path of the Bolognese and that of Lando Norris from karting to F1 – in many ways, his career path to date has mirrored that of current F1 star, Lando Norris. Norris was also a super karting champion, who became champion of F4 and then of the then Formula Regional, Formula Renault”.
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