Kimi Antonelli has endured a difficult run of races recently, with the highly-rated rookie going through growing pains typical of a driver of his youth and inexperience.
Antonelli has shown incredible potential during the first half of his maiden season in Formula 1, but is currently experiencing a lull in high points as misfortune and mistakes have plagued him in recent rounds.
Kimi Antonelli ‘not super happy’ after difficult weekends
The highly-rated rookie caught the eye of the entire F1 paddock during the opening salvo of races this year, with a stand-out performance in the season opener in Australia followed with a volley of consistency as he took four sixth-places across the next five rounds.
Taking his first ‘pole position’ by finishing fastest in Sprint Qualifying in Miami, the Italian showed his rough edges as the more experienced drivers behind him applied the pressure at the race start, and this was followed up with a mistake in qualifying in Monaco.
Technical issues took him out of the races at Imola and Barcelona, before a stellar race in Canada saw him take his first podium finish by placing third behind team-mate and race winner George Russell, and second-placed Max Verstappen.
But it’s been a miserable run since, with a high-profile mistake on the first lap in Austria resulting in an immediate retirement as he collided with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen. The Italian was taken out at Silverstone when an unsighted Isack Hadjar ran into the back of him.
Antonelli struggled with a lack of confidence in the balance of the W16 all weekend in Silverstone. The high-speed handling of his car wasn’t to his liking, his difficult weekend capped off by a rare strategic error from Mercedes as the squad pitted him for dry tyres just before the rain intensified in the early stages of the British GP.
It’s left Antonelli with four retirements from the last six races, with only one points finish (via that maiden podium), and only 15 points from the second quarter of the championship – the first quarter-season netted him 48 points.
“It’s a rough run since Montreal for us, two races that were really subpar. Everybody feels that way in the team, and for Kimi also,” Mercedes’ team boss Toto Wolff said after the British Grand Prix.
“As a team, and for Kimi, we need to go back to a baseline. He’s a great driver. There’s a reason why we took him.
“As a team, we know what we are able to achieve and reconcile, like reset properly, and then take it from there. There are two more races [before the summer break] to go and try to bounce back.”
The usually chirpy Antonelli has been noticeably more downbeat over recent races. His future isn’t yet certain, although the likelihood is that he will remain with Mercedes next season as the Brackley-based squad given his overall progress.
But there’s no doubt that things on track haven’t gone particularly well for of late, with the 18-year-old saying he needs a reset to get back on course with his own expectations.
“I’m not super happy, to be honest,” he said.
“Too many zeros scored. I’ve been struggling to find some positives, to be honest, it feels like nothing is really working our way. I just need to focus and reset and try to find, again, the light at the end of the tunnel because, definitely, I’m not going through a nice moment.”
Asked by PlanetF1.com whether he believes such highs and lows are simply part of being a rookie learning in their first season, Antonelli said he didn’t expect to be immune from typical rookie growing pains.
“You can expect that, in the first season, you can have highs – big highs and also big lows,” he said.
“Of course, the thing I want is to minimise these lows and want to be as consistent as possible. So I just need to reset and try not to repeat the same mistakes. Next time, I will know better how to react.”
While Antonelli has shown his maturity by understanding the bigger picture, knowing he will have such lows, he admitted that, even with that mental preparation, it’s “definitely” very different dealing with the reality of the low moments when they occur.
“You can plan all these scenarios but then, when the moments arrive, especially for the first time, you don’t really know how to react,” he told PlanetF1.com.
“I just try in the moment to react the best way.”
What Mercedes is doing to help Kimi Antonelli reset
Speaking in the aftermath of the Silverstone race, Wolff explained that he was “okay with what happened” to Antonelli, pointing to how Mercedes had placed its driver in an awkward position with its risky tyre choice in the first place.
Keeping Antonelli buoyant and happy, rather than letting his head drop as the excitement of making it into F1 could give way to disappointment in himself, will be imperative to getting the best from his driver, Wolff believes.
“He was put in an impossible position,” the Austrian explained.
“It’s just important now to keep him in a good frame of mind and not make him suffer or blame himself.”
The answer for resetting, Wolff believes, is in trying to ensure that driver and team don’t get bogged down in the detail and, instead, aim for simplification.
“I’m not sure he’s trying too hard. I think he wants to do well,” he said.
“Obviously, there’s a ton of information that’s coming down on him, and his way of trying to extract the best from the car.
“I think saying, ‘Okay, I know I can drive. What is it I need to do for that to come back?’
“The whole work for us as a team and for the drivers is simplification. We are overthinking.”
Part of Antonelli’s quest for a return to form will rely on the upgrades Mercedes brings along for the W16, with team representative Bradley Lord opening up on the expectations for the final two races before the summer break as he spoke in Mercedes’ official debrief of the British Grand Prix.
“It’s been a pretty bruising double header to be honest with Austria and then Silverstone as well,” he said.
“We’ve just got one fifth-place finish to show for our efforts and one 10th-place finish. So well below our expectations.
“First and foremost, it is to put ourselves on a much better footing and demonstrate the full performance potential of the car. And after that, we’ve got updates coming.
“We’ve got a number of things to understand about the weekend in Silverstone, notably the balance limitation for Kimi and whether the drivers are able to really commit to those high-speed corners as much as they want to with how we’re running the car at the moment.
“So we need to dig through that, make some decisions on what the spec of the car will be for Spa. And then also we’ve got some performance updates coming in both Spa and Hungary.
“So opportunities to make steps forward there. Likewise, we’ve got a Sprint weekend in Spa. So just one practice session and then we’ve got to be right on it and straight into qualifying. So it’s going to be a challenge, but we’re hopeful of being able to give a much better showing than we did either in Silverstone or in Austria.”
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