Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff says Kimi Antonelli is ‘learning Formula 1 the hard way’, following the youngster’s sizeable crash in Free Practice 3 at the Australian Grand Prix.
Antonelli went off at the end of the final practice session at Melbourne’s Albert Park Circuit, losing control on the Turn 2 kerb and destroying both the front and rear ends of his W17.
His mechanics managed to repair his Silver Arrow in just two hours ahead of the qualifying session, with Antonelli praising them as “heroes”; he went on to qualify in – and race to – second place, though this wasn’t as straightforward as it sounds.
Antonelli lacked energy deployment at the start and dropped to seventh position, so he had to overtake Lando Norris, Arvid Lindblad (twice) and Isack Hadjar as he fought back to fourth; Ferrari not pitting under the virtual safety car then comfortably promoted the sophomore to second when the Scuderia finally called its cars in.
“He’s literally learning it the hard way, which makes him stronger,” Wolff commented after the race. “He was very, very strong on Friday and his pace on Saturday was there. But then the accident happened, and that can happen.
“And I think it’s a miracle that the mechanics were able to put the car back on track for qualifying. And you can see that it’s just a very solid base of a car and that there wasn’t any set-up on it. He was able to qualify so well and then execute in the race.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes
Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images
“Both cars have been harmed to a certain degree with the battery. That contributed also to that starting performance.
“And at the end, it’s a very good second place. He was very fast at the end. He had the pace and there’s more to be expected. And he will expect more from him and we will expect more performance from the car and getting rid of those gremlins. And then having the two race each other fair and square, hopefully with some of the other cars.”
Remarkably, Antonelli still finished just three seconds behind his race-winning team-mate George Russell.
Asked in the post-race press conference if he always was confident he could fight his way back to the front, the 19-year-old Italian replied: “Well, I didn’t really know, to be fair, but obviously the pace of the car was very strong and the pace was strong too. I felt very, very good in the first stint. Then on the hards, I started to grain very early on and had a bit of a difficult time, but then at the end the pace came back.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes
Photo by: Lars Baron / Getty Images
“But of course, the start was a game changer. It obviously was very stressful because I didn’t have power out of the last corner, so the car was not responding to any inputs and it was very stressful, and then the start was poor, very poor, and I just lost a lot of places and found myself having to chase.
“But the car was very strong. It was good fun at the end, and yeah, the team did an incredible job because I think the result of today was thanks as well, you know, mainly to the mechanics for the incredible job they did yesterday after FP3. So yeah, definitely it was a good end of the weekend and now we will focus on China.”
Additional reporting by Ronald Vording
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