Mercedes have praised Kimi Antonelli for the progress he has made during his rookie F1 season so far, believing the teenager is now \u201cfinding his feet more quickly\u201d at race weekends after approaching early rounds \u201cwith a degree of caution\u201d.<\/p>\n
Antonelli climbed from F4 to F1 in just over three years with his 2025 promotion to a race seat at the Silver Arrows, where he has been competing alongside experienced, multiple Grand Prix-winner George Russell.<\/p>\n
While the 18-year-old Italian made an instant impression via a brilliant charge from 16th to fourth at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, he found himself battling to get up to speed at several events that followed<\/a>.<\/p>\n Then, dotted around a spell of incidents and retirements, came two breakthrough results \u2013 Antonelli storming to a maiden pole position<\/a> during Sprint Qualifying in Miami and scoring his first F1 podium<\/a> in Canada.<\/p>\n Following that podium finish, Antonelli admitted that he had potentially \u201coverreacted\u201d to his dramatic Free Practice debut crash<\/a> at last year\u2019s Italian Grand Prix and was \u201ca bit too safe\u201d in his approach moving forward.<\/p>\n Assessing Antonelli\u2019s start to life in F1 shortly before the summer break, Mercedes Technical Director James Allison shared that theory, while highlighting how the team have been trying to help build his overall confidence.<\/p>\n \u201cWe talk about this a bit internally, and it may just be more gossip than reality, but the trip into the barrier at Monza, I think that may have just left him approaching the weekends with a degree of caution as a result,\u201d Allison told select media, including F1.com.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve been encouraging him to sort of trust [his] talent: \u2018You can lean into that more than you think you can\u2019. As he gets the confidence to do that, he\u2019s finding his feet more quickly during the weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n As it stands, Antonelli sits seventh in the Drivers\u2019 Championship<\/a> on 64 points, while the aforementioned Russell holds fourth on 172 \u2013 the Briton having scored a race win and five further podiums this year.<\/p>\n Given Russell\u2019s speed and knowledge, with the 27-year-old making his F1 debut back in 2019 and being a long-time member of the Mercedes family, Allison described the situation as \u201ca brilliant apprenticeship\u201d for Antonelli.<\/p>\n \u201cGeorge has barely put a foot wrong,\u201d Allison said of Russell\u2019s season. \u201cHe\u2019s been on the money in Qualifying. Where we\u2019ve given him a car that he\u2019s able to work with, he\u2019s done everything we could have hoped [for] with it, so bravo to him.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s obviously giving Kimi a very high standard to shoot for. I\u2019m pleased with the fact that Kimi, generally speaking this year, has been able to get close to George as the weekend\u2019s gone on. As the year\u2019s gone on, perhaps you could say he gets in the groove a bit swifter.<\/p>\n \u201cBut George is setting a very, very high bar. It\u2019s a brilliant apprenticeship for Kimi to have someone as swift as George to shoot for.\u201d<\/p>\n Antonelli\u2019s quest for progress has also been boosted by Mercedes reverting to an older specification of suspension following their failed mid-season switch \u2013 the youngster returning to the points in Hungary and declaring that he was \u201cgetting the confidence back\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mercedes have praised Kimi Antonelli for the progress he has made during his rookie F1 season so far,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":343592,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[4199,707,4200,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-343591","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-f1","9":"tag-formula-1","10":"tag-formula1","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115026603899131148","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/343592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}