Mercedes has confirmed that Kimi Antonelli will sit out first practice ahead of this weekend’s Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, with Frederik Vesti taking his seat.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Each team must field a rookie in four first-practice sessions during the 2026 season, with Williams and Cadillac also announcing driver changes for this weekend.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Luke Browning will replace Alex Albon, while Colton Herta will make his FP1 debut for F1’s newest team, replacing Sergio Perez.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
It has been an exceptional start to the season for Antonelli, who enters the seventh round with a 66-point lead over Lewis Hamilton in the drivers’ standings.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
The 19-year-old has won five consecutive races and became the youngest driver to win the Monaco Grand Prix last time out.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
His car will be in good hands, with Vesti serving as Mercedes’ official reserve driver. The Dane has already taken part in several first-practice sessions for the Silver Arrows.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mercedes has confirmed that Kimi Antonelli will sit out first practice ahead of this weekend’s Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":726332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":["post-726331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=726331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/726332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=726331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=726331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=726331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}