All the team changes
Ahead of the 2025 season, Mercedes will enter the next championship with an almost completely revamped driver lineup: apart from George Russell, the Englishman will have a new teammate in young rookie Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who will face the challenging task of inheriting the car of a seven-time world champion like Lewis Hamilton, who is set to begin a new chapter with Ferrari at the age of 40.
At the same time, Mercedes will no longer have the same reserve driver who remained with the team until last month: the Brackley outfit has welcomed back a former driver, Valtteri Bottas, while bidding farewell to Mick Schumacher. The son of another seven-time world champion, Michael, has definitively abandoned any hope of returning to Formula 1, due to both Antonelli’s promotion and the arrivals of two other rookies, Gabriel Bortoleto and Jack Doohan, who have taken the only two remaining seats at Sauber and Alpine, respectively.
Toto Wolff agrees
As a result, after failing for a third consecutive year to secure an F1 return and being limited to test activities, Schumacher has chosen to leave the Grand Circus and focus on another category, the WEC, where he will have the opportunity to compete: “He made a very wise decision. He has reached a point where waiting no longer makes sense, and now he wants to race, and he will undoubtedly do so successfully,” said Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff to Sky Deutschland. “He is a young talent with the right values. He is very intelligent but, unfortunately, never had the opportunity in the right environment in Formula 1.”
The brief experience
Formula 2 champion in 2020, Mick Schumacher debuted in Formula 1 with Haas the following year, staying with the American team through 2022, when he also left the Ferrari Driver Academy. After scoring a total of 12 points and amid disagreements with then-Team Principal Günther Steiner, his F1 experience ended before joining Mercedes in 2023 as a third driver and tester for the German manufacturer, as well as for McLaren and Williams.
