{"id":110172,"date":"2025-09-01T05:15:37","date_gmt":"2025-09-01T05:15:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/110172\/"},"modified":"2025-09-01T05:15:37","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T05:15:37","slug":"kimi-antonelli-apologised-for-crash-with-charles-leclerc-fred-vasseur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/110172\/","title":{"rendered":"Kimi Antonelli apologised for crash with Charles Leclerc – Fred Vasseur"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur welcomed Mercedes rookie Kimi Antonelli<\/a> coming to him to apologize for a crash which sent Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc<\/a> spinning into the wall at Sunday’s Dutch Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

Leclerc came out from a pit stop ahead of Antonelli, who tried to pass Leclerc on the inside of a tight banked corner but clipped his rear wheel and sent the Ferrari into the barrier.<\/p>\n

Leclerc had been in contention for a podium place earlier but instead watched the end of the race from a sand dune trackside.<\/p>\n

“He came to apologize to Charles. Charles was not there, but he came to me. And honestly I appreciate this,” Vasseur said.<\/p>\n

“It’s not so easy to overtake in Zandvoort. It means that you have to take a risk. He took a risk. He made a mistake.”<\/p>\n

Charles Leclerc crashed at the same corner his teammate Lewis Hamilton had earlier in the race.\u00a0Kym Illman\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Leclerc said he believed the incident was an honest mistake on a track where overtaking is difficult, and refused to chalk it up to Antonelli’s inexperience.<\/p>\n

“I wouldn’t describe it as a rookie mistake. I think it’s just a mistake which can happen in the first year or the fifth year,” Leclerc said. “On a track like this you need to be aggressive [to overtake], but that was too much.”<\/p>\n

Leclerc hit the wall in almost the same spot as his teammate Lewis Hamilton<\/a> had crashed out earlier in the race<\/a>, sliding wide on a track which had become slippery during a rain shower. It was the first time neither Ferrari driver scored points since their double disqualification at the Chinese Grand Prix in March.<\/p>\n

However the pain didn’t end there for Ferrari. Hours after the race, Hamilton was handed a five-place grid penalty<\/a> for next week’s race at Monza — the team’s home grand prix — for failing to slow enough under yellow flags during the formation lap.<\/p>\n

Leclerc, meanwhile, escaped a penalty from a collision with George Russell that was ruled a racing incident by stewards.<\/p>\n

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What had been a promising race for the out-of-form Antonelli ended with the Italian finishing outside of the points for the seventh time in nine grands prix. That was because of a 10-second penalty for colliding with Leclerc and another five-second penalty for speeding in the pit lane.<\/p>\n

“I was feeling good in the car and just a shame to have missed out,” the 19-year-old Italian driver told broadcaster Sky Sports.<\/p>\n

“For the contact, obviously it’s on me. I tried to avoid it, especially when I saw he was coming back in front, but it was not enough. So obviously I feel sorry to Charles and to the team and now we move forward.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur welcomed Mercedes rookie Kimi Antonelli coming to him to apologize for a crash…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110173,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-110172","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-motor","11":"tag-motor-sports","12":"tag-motosport","13":"tag-motosports","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}