Why Antonelli agrees with Mercedes boss’s “underwhelming” verdict

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff remains one of his protege Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s biggest cheerleaders, but he was unequivocal in describing his Italian Grand Prix performance as “underwhelming”.

This despite Antonelli finishing in the points – a rarity since Imola – and qualifying less than half a tenth off team-mate George Russell. Antonelli agrees.

“I think I understand this comment,” he said in the FIA press conference ahead of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. “Me and Toto, we’re always very open to each other. And I think it was mainly about the race. Qualifying was actually pretty good, despite the off in FP2.

“But then in the race, especially on the hard tyre, I struggled a little bit. And also, I did the mistake on the start.

“‘So I think it was mainly related to the race, which I agree on the comment, which wasn’t the best. But as well, I took it with positivity, as fuel to do even better for this race weekend.” 

Antonelli had qualified seventh, which became sixth with Lewis Hamilton’s grid penalty, but squandered it with a poor start which left him in 10th, bottled up behind Yuki Tsunoda’s Red Bull. By the time he cleared Tsunoda he was 11s behind Russell on track, with Hamilton in between them, and unable to make further headway.

So although Antonelli pitted just one lap later than his team-mate, at the end of lap 28, the Mercedes drivers emerged with two cars between them – the Alpines of Franco Colapinto and, more significantly, Pierre Gasly, who was running an ultra-long first stint on the hard Pirellis.

While both Mercedes drivers were broadly quicker during their hard-tyre stint than they had been during the opening one on mediums, Antonelli was faster than Russell on just three of the remaining laps. The scatter plot of Antonelli’s lap times in that stint makes for ugly viewing: he fell away from Russell by another 12s, made heavy weather of clearing Gasly, then lost a position late on to Alex Albon’s Williams.

He shipped almost 2s relative to Russell on the lap he finally forced his way past Gasly, then again when Albon got by. Antonelli also incurred a five-second penalty for “erratic driving” in his defence against Albon, which dropped him behind Sauber’s Gabriel Bortoleto.

Antonelli’s reasoning was that his spin at the second Lesmo corner early in FP2 meant he missed out on a long run on hards which was in the programme for that session. 

“I went completely blind into the race,” he said, “I didn’t get to feel the car on high fuel at all. And so it was a bit difficult because I had to learn in the moment. And on the hard, I just struggled to find my rhythm. So that was not ideal.

“But the speed in qualifying was much better in Monza.”

Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes

Photo by: Jayce Illman / Getty Images

Wolff has been very clear about the necessary improvement trajectory for Antonelli: he needs to avoid errors in practice which cost vital track time and therefore compound through the weekend.

“I just made a lot of driving mistakes because, I was struggling to find my rhythm and I was trying different things,” said Antonelli. “He [Wolff] doesn’t want that to happen again, just because also in the race, I lost a lot of time. The conversation was pretty clear.

“He just wants me to have a clean weekend, to get that momentum that I had, for example, in the first seven races of the season – because obviously the European season has been quite tough.”