Autobayng News Team
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff isn’t concerned about Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s recent dip in form, acknowledging he has faced the “maximum pressure” in his rookie Formula 1 season.
Antonelli made a strong start to life in F1, scoring points in all bar one of his first six events. In the eight rounds since then he’s only taken points twice, though one of those was his breakthrough podium finish in Canada.
Mercedes promoted Antonelli to F1 at the age of just 18, after a single season in Formula 2. The team announced that decision the day after giving Antonelli his debut in an official F1 practice session at the Italian Grand Prix, where he crashed on his sixth lap.
Wolff admitted Antonelli’s immediate promotion to a front-running F1 team had made his debut more challenging. “I think we have put Kimi under maximum pressure, to be honest,” he said. “Looking at it now, I felt it was a great idea to have him in FP1 in Monza [last year] and present him there. That was maybe a mistake.
“Not because he wasn’t capable of driving the car, because if he had finished that lap without crashing it would have been sensational and it would have built the confidence. That’s why he’s in a Mercedes.”
Antonelli lost most of yesterday’s first practice session when he went off and got stuck in a gravel trap. But Wolff said the team are not dwelling on one-off setbacks and are keeping the faith in their young driver.
“He’s very visible, his results are very visible, his team mate is great and is maximising the car. Therefore, he feels himself under the magnifying glass.
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“The team just continue to believe in him. He needs time. We’ve embarked on this route, so you can say: ‘Was it right to put him under so much pressure by putting him in the team?’ We’ve taken that trajectory, we’ve taken that route, we are fully on the mission, and single race weekends or a session like we had before is not going to change our opinion.
“Yes [in the] short-term we’re going to say ‘that’s not good’, but Kimi is a long-term investment.”
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