Inside the arms race finding the next Antonelli and Bearman

While the 2025 Formula 1 season is heralded as having the finest rookie intake in years, teams are scouring the karting scene trying to unearth the next raw diamond.

The upcoming season will feature no less than five full-time rookies, with a lot of attention on Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton replacement Andrea Kimi Antonelli, while Ferrari protege Oliver Bearman debuts for Haas and Jack Doohan gets the nod at Alpine. Isack Hadjar is the next Red Bull junior to enter the world championship at Racing Bulls, with the driver who beat him to the Formula 2 title Gabriel Bortoleto getting a chance at Sauber.

What does F1’s class of 2025 have in common? Other than bags of talent, the quintet has been carefully brought through the single-seater ladder with the support of a junior programme or young driver academy. The importance of these has not only grown for F1 hopefuls, but also for the teams that end up benefitting from them.

It goes without saying that a hyper-expensive sport like motor racing and its huge barrier to entry presents a major stumbling block for kids without wealthy backgrounds or sponsors willing to jump on board early on in their careers. Appearing on the radar of an F1 team can make or break a career at an early age.

For the teams themselves, junior programmes have also shown to yield enormous benefits. Just look at how the likes of Lando Norris, George Russell and Charles Leclerc were prepared for the big time by their respective backers and soon started delivering the goods.

Each team has its own methods, targets and philosophy, although in recent years most outfits have been converging on a bottom-heavy approach, preferring to back more kids lower on the ladder rather than having an overload of drivers in F3 and F2, a problem which Red Bull used to have.

That has evolved into somewhat of an arms race down to the intermediate levels of go-karting. In recent months alone, McLaren signed Belgium’s 14-year-old world junior karting champion Dries van Langendonck, while Williams added even younger karting prodigies like Will Green (the 11-year-old son of DTM race winner Jamie) and Lucas Palacio (10) to its academy roster.

The attributes teams are looking for

The quest to find the next big thing is leading teams further down the ladder to snap up interesting talents before their competitors do, but trying to cut through the noise of the karting scene and deciding which youngster has what it takes can be tricky.

“Every year, you have to tap into all of the junior formulae and the karting world at a fairly deep-rooted level,” says Jock Clear, who is in charge of Ferrari’s academy in addition to his duties as a senior performance engineer. “You need to be talking to all of the karting teams and the people who are in the know in the karting league, because there’s a lot of kids out there at that level and it’s desperately difficult to know who seems to be [the most promising].

“You can notice if they are different or more mature by the way they are answering certain questions. But you never have the real answer in the early days” Gwen Lagrue

“The quickest may not necessarily be the most talented. The distortion is still there in karting, where some of the kids can afford much better equipment, can afford to go to better teams and go testing every weekend. Some of them are just trying to hang on by a thread.

“So, you need to pick the bones out of that. We’re never going to know at that age whether they’re the next Lewis Hamilton, even if they stand out dramatically, but at least we’re looking for some key ingredients.”

Clear’s opposite number at Mercedes, driver development advisor Gwen Lagrue, agrees there are no guarantees every raw diamond can be polished for F1, but says he is looking beyond the raw speed for certain personality traits that could be indicators of talent having what it takes.

“Of course, speed is obviously something we are looking at,” says Lagrue, who has been credited with bringing through the likes of Esteban Ocon, Russell and Antonelli in the Mercedes programme. “But I like to watch consistency, the way they are defending, preparing a move, stuff like this. But we are also giving a lot of importance to their attitude, the family background, education, and try to understand where they’re coming from.

“What we are doing on our side, maybe different than other programmes, is that each driver is a specific project and requires tailor-made support and that’s what we are trying to understand when they are racing in go-karts, and then we put the right people around them to try to do everything right when they are finishing their go-kart career, and before we move up to a single-seaters.

Clear says certain traits that are desirable in future F1 talents can be discerned by careful observation of karting prospects

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

“We are working with humans, they are not robots, so you never have the guarantee they will succeed or they will perform. When you are used to meeting champions at this age, you can notice if they are different or more mature by the way they are answering certain questions. But you never have the real answer in the early days.”

Ferrari organises its FDA World Scouting Camp in Maranello, inviting the talents it has scouted over the previous year to its home base for a thorough evaluation.

“That means four or five days of being with them: mental assessment, physical assessment, talking to them, going to lunch with them,” Clear explains. “It’s like an extended interview, effectively, and every minute you’re with them, you’re evaluating something.

“It’s not just about whether they go fastest in Fiorano. Because even if they’re not the quickest, we’ll know whether they’ve got the talent, having engaged with them over three or four days.”

When the drivers being signed are effectively still young children, academies must strike a fine balance between letting their prodigies express themselves while upping the pressure in a responsible manner.

“I was probably one of the first to go down to go-karting and very young drivers, as we did with Kimi, for example, we signed him when he was 11,” says Lagrue. “I like to watch the international Mini category, just before they switch to Junior.

“When they are 12, we also let them enjoy what they are doing, because that is very important, and we try to let them express really who they are before implementing things. We let them make their own mistakes and do their thing, and then we are slowly putting the right organisation around them.”

“It’s not only about racing, because when you are signing a 12-year-old they are growing up with us and facing life challenges. That makes it very interesting and challenging. How do we help them go through all this and still deliver strong results? You are also becoming a confidant, let’s say.”

Antonelli has been on the books at Mercedes since he was a child and has been carefully moulded into an F1-ready racer

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Clear added: “The transition from kids to being mature young adults, it’s not our expertise. We’re not their family, we’re not their school. And that is another important factor; we look at a really strong support structure from home and the right sort of attitudes from the parents. You can only teach people things based on the maturity they’re displaying and that’s part of the learning process.”

Why juniors aren’t being spoon-fed

Having the might of an elite F1 operation behind them, including proper equipment and coaching, doesn’t mean that junior drivers are being completely mollycoddled, though. Instead, they are expected to take the initiative to improve their skillset and advance their own careers, showing the kind of proactive attitude and commitment that will turn a good racing driver into a great one.

“Oh, absolutely,” nods Clear. “You need young guys and girls who immediately reflect that ability to manage their own career, who are proactive and objective, realistic about their expectations. There’s a strong desire to say: ‘I’m going to win everything. That’s all I do. I’m just a winner.’

“Wanting to be a better driver all the time is a quality we want to nurture, so it’s really important that it comes from the driver” 
Guillaume Roquelin

“And when people say that to me, I’m already thinking: ‘Okay, you’re in for a hard life and you ain’t going to make it, son, because you’re not going to win everything. At all their karting levels they’ve been winning everything and then when they get to F3 they are going to meet quite a few people who are as quick as them.

“They’re not going to be the fastest driver all the time like they think they are. How quickly are they coming to terms with the fact that it isn’t just going to be about pure pace? Mentally that can be quite a challenge for them.”

Clear’s thoughts were echoed by Guillaume Roquelin, who looks after Red Bull’s young drivers after a long career as a senior F1 engineer, including a stint as a race engineer for the likes of Sebastian Vettel.

“Wanting to be a better driver all the time is a quality we want to nurture, so it’s really important that it comes from the driver,” Roquelin, better known as ‘Rocky’, shared on the Talking Bulls podcast. “We’re there to educate them, to present possibilities and solutions, but we’re not there to spoon-feed them.

“There are things you don’t know unless somebody tells you, so we’re there to present it, but that’s as far as it goes. A good example is that at the beginning of the year, we’ll do a physical assessment of a driver and we’ll say: ‘This is not good enough. This is where you need to be in six months.’ Done. That’s it, go do it.

Drivers are expected to show initiative to ensure they don’t plateau, but continue to improve

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

“Of course, if the driver doesn’t have a physio, then we’ll make some recommendations, we might give them a training programme. But ultimately we’re not there to tell them to do 10 press-ups, you know?

“Whether it’s nutrition or technical support, these are the range of things we can offer. These are the recommendations we’re making. You make the choices. Ultimately, you’ll be judged on whether you reach the targets or not. The Red Bull credo is that we want individuals, so we don’t want to be overprotective, but we do provide a framework.”

Ultimately a young driver programme is only as credible as its results, and if you take the unchanged, rookie-less driver line-up for the start of the 2024 season in isolation, you might have thought there is a problem getting new blood into the series.

The 2025 season’s huge rookie class presents a course correction, and the likes of Antonelli and Bearman, like Russell and Leclerc before them, show to young F1 hopefuls around the world that there is a credible pathway all the way to an F1 seat, not just within Red Bull but across the grid.

Leveling the playing field

With more and more teams developing a fully-fledged academy programme, the competition to discover and then sign the next generational talents has become somewhat of an arms race, with Clear admitting Ferrari is keeping tabs on what its rivals are doing and re-considering its approach accordingly.

“It is a bit of an arms race,” he acknowledged. “What tends to happen is that you hear about young karting kids, and you hear that McLaren have already picked this guy up, and you think: ‘Oh, maybe we’ve missed a trick there.’ We’ll see whether the kids they’re picking up at this age turn out to be good.

“It’s a little bit fraught with more issues, because they are that much younger. There’s plenty of time for them to fall away and you’re going to have to spend more money if you are investing in them from 12 years old. The proof is in the pudding.

“We’re looking at what McLaren have done, or we’re looking at what Mercedes have done, and we’re saying maybe we need to look back to OK-J, the year before OK and maybe before that. Fundamentally, we keep our principal objectives on identifying clear talent that stands out, rather than just picking up any kids who have won a few races. Then you’re starting to spread yourself a bit thin, so it’s about how well we think we can identify the really good talent down at that level. And if we don’t think we can, we won’t do it.”

Kart racing is a fertile ground for F1 teams to tap into and secure future talents early, but it is not without risk

Photo by: DPPI

Lagrue thinks it is healthy for more teams to get involved at karting level, but doesn’t agree with the notion of an arms race. “We are not thinking about what others are doing,” he countered. “It’s not a competition to sign this guy or that girl.

“Firstly, we can’t take them all, so it’s quite healthy to have others also picking a few kids. And secondly, I don’t feel like we have necessarily missed someone according to the strategy we had, because I prefer to focus on a small group of drivers and make sure we will bring them to the top. Or if they are not ending up in F1, make sure they will become professional.

“I’ve now been with Mercedes for nine years and we have brought through Esteban, George and now Kimi. And we can talk about Pascal Wehrlein or Alex Albon because they were with us as well. Of course, guys like Lando Norris or Oscar Piastri were there, but we were not ready anyway to give them something when they were available.”

“Even if you don’t have a lot of financial resources, you can still enter into a Formula 1 programme” Gwen Lagrue

With their budgets and pathways, F1 teams do have the power to help level the playing field, whether it is providing opportunities to children from modest backgrounds or giving female drivers a push, with all 10 teams now involved in the all-female F1 Academy.

“Doriane Pin, and trying get more girls involved in motorsport, is an important project for us,” Lagrue stressed. “And we are also working a lot to open the access to the sport to as many young drivers as possible, boys or girls.

“The last example is we gave opportunities to Kenzo Craigie, who won the world karting championship, and James Anagnostiadis, who is coming from Australia without money and won the final last year of Champions of the Future [a programme aimed at making karting more accessible]. We signed James and he ended up second in the world championship, just behind Kenzo.

“It shows that even if you don’t have a lot of financial resources, you can still enter into a Formula 1 programme.”

F1 teams are involved in supporting drivers in the all-female F1 Academy, with Pin set for her second year at Prema this year

Photo by: Clive Mason/Getty Images