Was that the first little liberation that Andrea Kimi Antonelli needed? The Italian is currently not doing an easy time. The 19-year-old has not been running around for some time: if you calculate the race in Canada, the Mercedes pilot brought together in eight races-far too little for the ambitions of the silver arrows.
At Mercedes, you demonstratively stand behind the rookie, but in the past few weeks voices had increased that critically see and question the start of a top team. Above all, Jacques Villeneuve hadn’t left good hair on him and meant that his age should not be an excuse.
Before his home game in Monza, Antonelli was therefore all the more under pressure after it was also suboptimal in Zandvoort. Here the Italian returns to the place where he had his first training mission a year ago – and completely dismantled the car after a few minutes.
Tense after training departure
When the next mishap happened to him on Friday, his weekend seemed to get on the wrong track again. In qualifying, however, he was able to withstand the pressure and for the first time since Silverstone again in Q3, although he had come into danger in the meantime in Q1.
“I won’t be lying, I was pretty tense before qualifying,” admits the youngster. He was “very nervous”, also because he had lost momentum again after the ride on Friday.
“FT1 was actually strong and I felt like I had a good flow. But then I flew up in FT2 super early, so I lost everything and had to start again in FT3,” he says. “It wasn’t easy, but I’m happy how I built the run through the session.”
2024 is “definitely overcome”
In the end, he was seventh for him, a position behind teammate George Russell. “I was satisfied,” he laughs, even if he still saw some air in his last round. “We tried something else with the tires and really had problems in the first two sectors, especially with the rear,” he describes at Sky.
“The last sector felt strong, but the time I lost in the first two sectors was just too big,” said Antonelli. But he also had an impetus that he succeeded in the last sector: “I definitely overcome what happened in Parabolica last year,” he clarifies.
There was also a problem in qualifying to find the right slipstream – also because the Mercedes on the straight appear to be a little slower, as the Italian thinks. “So it was crucial to have the right distance to benefit on the straight, but not to lose too much in the curves.”
As you don’t do it, he had to find out in Q1: “In Q1 I was too close in the last sector and had no grip. It was really hard to find the right distance to the in front. In the last round I was probably a bit too far away, but it was still okay.”
For the race on Sunday, he now has the hope that Mercedes can fight for the top 5, even if the missing speed on the straight overtaking may make it difficult. “But hopefully the pace is strong, and hopefully we can do something different with the strategy than the others and maybe make up positions.”
Nico Rosberg: Antonelli from the talent like Hamilton and Max
A good result would definitely be balm for him after the last difficult races and the hard statements of some experts. Ex -pilot Nico Rosberg also believes that some tips – especially those of Villeneuve – were “a bit hard”.
He would not sign that he does not deserve to be in Formula 1: “From the talent, he is at the level of Hamilton or Verstappen, he demonstrated that in the go-kart at the time,” says the ex-world champion, confirming what Mercedes sees in him.
Antonelli is the “exceptional talent in the generation,” he emphasizes. “But somehow it is much more difficult for him than we would have expected now. He makes a lot of mistakes and is not fast enough either.”
But Rosberg expresses understanding because the ground effect cars are extremely difficult to drive. “Even a Lewis Hamilton suddenly turns away in qualifying, all alone and in Zandvoort. You never saw that before that he makes two capital mistakes,” says Rosberg.
In addition, with George Russell, Antonelli has a teammate who drives “phenomenally strong” and is one of the best drivers for Rosberg this year.
“And the car is not a good car at the moment,” he says. “And when you are in midfield and are three tenths away from the teammate, then you are suddenly instead of fourth thirteenth. And once you are in chaos, then you won’t get out.”
But it is important now that Antonelli is working out of this deep.
Does the father have to take back more?
A tip from Rosberg: The Youngster should perhaps be a little more away from his father, who is there in every race. He himself was about to ask the father if he would not prefer to expose a race to just let the son do it. Because Rosberg still remembers his own beginnings.
“My parents were very present and for me it was always very important that they were proud of me. And I was always afraid when I fail that they are not proud of me,” he explains. “And that always made me extra pressure.”
The fact that his father Keke – world champion from 1982 – then withdrew at some point was finally the right way for him. “The pressure I put on my own is a bit flattened.”
Antonelli’s advice to his younger me
And what too much pressure can do with a young driver was obvious last year with Antonelli’s first training session.
“Monza was really hard for me last year, and I lost a lot of confidence,” admits the Italian and has advice to his younger self from that time: “I would simply tell him that he should continue and not too much to worry about the result.”
“I had the feeling that it slowed me down like a handbrake because I was too fixated on the result and didn’t work enough about what I actually had to do,” said Antonelli.
Domenicali: Will have extraordinary career
Since then, however, a lot has happened and Antonelli has matured heavily. And if Formula 1 travels to Monza again in the coming year, Antonelli will be another again, believes Formula 1 boss Stefano Domenicali.
“I’ve known him since he was a child, and I think he has to understand that Formula 1 is a world in which you become very quickly grown up and in which the experiences you have in a single day are worth years,” says this.
“If you face a challenge like the one he is mastery, you can’t expect everything to run perfectly immediately. But this experience will let him mature very quickly, and I think we will see another kimi next year – more consciously in what he has to do.”
“The months he has experienced since Imola are worth years and I am still convinced that he can have an extraordinary career.”