Antonelli's Netflix film review: Self-serving and way too soon

Before we get into spoiler content, let’s be clear from the outset: this is Mercedes PR spun as a movie. Clearly, every single shot is framed to make the team look as good as possible. Even some of the shots filmed with family feel a bit staged—and that’s saying something—Kimi’s natural charisma offers some of the only respite from the corporate machine.

That’s not to say that there’s nothing worth watching here. If you’re reading this right now, you’re probably a bit of a petrolhead, and there are some interesting ‘behind the scenes’ insights to be found. But just like Drive to Survive, it comes across as too scripted.

In this context, the apparent ‘sponsorship’ of this short film by WhatsApp is even weirder. It’s almost like the director’s trying to say, ‘I’m telling the truth; see, here’s the evidence!’

If you insist on wasting 40 minutes of your time watching this train wreck, then this is the point of no return. Spoilers are included from here on out. Although the movie doesn’t really reveal all that much. If you’ve watched this F1 season, you probably know everything anyway.

Antonelli’s documentary ‘The Seat’ starts with the news breaking that he’ll be replacing Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes. So far, so good. After all, that’s the premise of the film. That the young Italian is perhaps a little too inexperienced to take over the seat.

The problems begin when the movie starts to jump around chronologically. With such a short run time, the director really should’ve told the story in a linear fashion. In the final cut, Antonelli goes from new Formula 1 driver to promising kart racer and back again. There’s no mention of the Italian’s outstanding junior career anywhere else in the movie.

The Drive to Survive-style inconsistencies don’t end there. WhatsApp messages fill in dialogue in many places where the cameras clearly didn’t have access. At one point, this even sees Toto Wolff bizarrely messaging Mercedes colleagues trackside about individual pit stop times.

It would’ve been way more interesting to find out how Antonelli has been integrated into the team at their Brackley base. Or better yet, for us to see him guided on performance. Instead, we got the usual gaggle of PR merchants from F1TV and the Mercedes team telling us about the youngster’s talent. Showing us would’ve been much more interesting.

Even if they’d asked pundits from outside the F1 clique for opinions, it would’ve underlined Antonelli's potential. In the final edit, viewers are told what to believe. There must be less than a minute of actual race footage included in the show!

The less Mercedes’ PR team were involved, the better the movie got. Antonelli’s seat fitting offered one of the better moments. He visibly enjoyed the chance to be around the car (having not raced in F1 yet). His banter with Peter 'Bono' Bonnington also appeared unscripted.

When the Italian is with his family, the movie really begins to shine. If there is any reason to watch, this is it. At one point, he receives a gift at the dinner table, and the Antonellis all well up. It’s excellently done and highlights just how much F1 means to fans and drivers alike.

But even these moments are overshadowed by gimmicky editing. All the (nearly) on-track learning we see is also weirdly focused around pit stop timing. And when one of the crew is injured, the whole thing is framed as some kind of learning experience. The jarring nature of this scene is highlighted by James Allison telling us how Antonelli is new to the whole process.

He’s a bloody race driver for goodness sake. Of course he’s seen a pit stop before! Okay, Antonelli skipped F3, but he competed in F2. This scene really underlines how disconnected the film is from reality. And how viewers are disconnected from any heart-to-heart moments it happens to stumble upon.

We’re only six races into the 2025 season (and Antonelli’s F1 career). Depending on how you view that statistic, it could be seen as a good or bad thing. On the one hand, scenes with his father about a tough racing upbringing could turn out to be prophetic in the future.

If the 18-year-old turns out to be one of the all-time greats, this film could be viewed differently in the years to come. But as things stand, Antonelli simply doesn’t have enough races under his belt to justify this kind of documentary. He’s fantastically talented but still relatively unproven at this level—and that’s fine. He’s definitely got age on his side.

Overall, this theme runs like a thread through the movie. It’s like they couldn’t get people outside the Mercedes stable to heap praise on their driver. Not without adding a caveat about his experience, anyway. This makes The Seat seem like too little, too soon.

If we end up eating humble pie over this review, it’ll be because the Italian aces his start to life in F1—and good luck to him. Heading into his home grand prix this weekend at Imola, it’d be fantastic if he did well. But we won’t be left red-faced by our hot takes. Frankly, the film was rubbish.