Lewis Hamilton’s advice to Kimi Antonelli before FP1 run: “Have fun, don’t give It all on the first lap”. Lewis Hamilton will hand over his car to Kimi Antonelli for Mexico FP1.

Back in Mexico
The first Free Practice session for the Mexican Grand Prix, which is scheduled to take place later this evening at the 4.304-kilometre Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City, will feature many young rookies driving various cars. Among them, for the second time in 2024, will be Andrea Kimi Antonelli, once again at the wheel of the Mercedes W15.

The Monza Incident
Unlike his first time at his home Grand Prix in Monza (where he was announced as a future Mercedes driver for the 2025 Formula 1 championship), Kimi Antonelli will momentarily replace Lewis Hamilton instead of George Russell. The young driver from Bologna will certainly want to avoid a repeat of what happened at Monza, where after just ten minutes, he lost control of the car at Parabolica, hitting the barriers and ending his first official weekend experience prematurely.

Lewis Hamilton’s advice
Speaking to the media on the eve of the weekend, the seven-time Formula world champion is confident that a similar incident won’t occur with his car in Mexico, though he offered some advice to his 2025 replacement: “Kimi is young and learned from his first experience at Monza,” explained the future Ferrari driver. “We did the briefing together because he’ll be working with Bono (race engineer Pete Bonnington) next year, and of course, I’m here to support him in any way I can. The key is, as I told him, he doesn’t need to give his all on the first lap. He just needs to enjoy himself. I told him the track is really dirty at the start. Whatever we face, we’ll handle it, but I don’t think he’ll have any problems.” – Lewis Hamilton concluded ahead of the Mexican Grand Prix weekend.