![\"Wolff](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/XPB_1369796_HiRes.jpg\")
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tKimi Antonelli has received his first public criticism by Toto Wolff. Image: XPB Images<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tKimi Antonelli has received his first public criticism by Toto Wolff. Image: XPB Images<\/p>\n
Antonelli arrived at Monza eager to reset following a troubled Dutch Grand Prix that had included a crash with Charles Leclerc and an off in practice.<\/p>\n
Instead, his second consecutive error-strewn weekend raised fresh questions about his consistency in his debut F1 season.<\/p>\n
The 19-year-old put his car in the gravel during second practice, losing valuable time to prepare for long runs. In Sunday\u2019s race he slipped backwards immediately, dropping from sixth to 10th with excessive wheelspin off the line.<\/p>\n
A recovery drive saw him climb to eighth on the road, but repeated track limits infringements earned him a black-and-white warning flag before a five-second penalty for forcing Alex Albon off track relegated him to ninth at the finish. Mercedes teammate George Russell finished in fifth place.<\/p>\n
After the race, Wolff\u2019s assessment was notably sharper than after Zandvoort.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnderwhelming this weekend. Underwhelming,\u201d he said of Antonelli.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t put the car in the gravel bed and expect to be there. All of the race was underwhelming.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t change anything in my support and confidence in his future because I believe he\u2019s going to be very, very, very good \u2014 but today was\u2026 underwhelming.\u201d<\/p>\n
Antonelli admitted his mistakes had left him on the back foot.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t do long runs in FP2 because of my mistakes, so I wasn\u2019t really prepared for the race,\u201d he said. \u201cThat also didn\u2019t help.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wolff pointed to a pattern of early-weekend errors limiting Antonelli\u2019s ability to build confidence, as well as suggesting the teenager\u2019s caution in attacking Pierre Gasly at Monza reflected lingering nerves from his clash with Leclerc in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n
\u201cA clean weekend means almost not to carry too much trauma of previous mistakes into the next session or into the next weekend, because that is baggage,\u201d Wolff explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re not going to attack the corner hard if you\u2019ve been off there before and it finished your session.<\/p>\n
\u201cOr maybe you\u2019re not attacking a driver that should not be in your way like Gasly, because he had this situation with Leclerc. Kimi shouldn\u2019t lose even a second on Gasly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the criticism, Wolff insisted the raw talent is not in doubt.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a great driver,\u201d the Mercedes boss added.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has this unbelievable ability and natural talent. He\u2019s a racer. It\u2019s all there. But we need to get rid of the ballast. It\u2019s just freeing him up. Freeing him up.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Italian\u2019s Monza result leaves him eighth in the standings.<\/p>\n
Mercedes is still to confirm its driver line-up for 2026. Wolff reiterated that Antonelli remains central to Mercedes\u2019 future plans, though no agreement has been finalised beyond his current deal.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kimi Antonelli has received his first public criticism by Toto Wolff. Image: XPB Images Antonelli arrived at Monza…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129717,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,44231,10115,806,805,803,804,85,4703],"class_list":{"0":"post-129716","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-italian-gp","11":"tag-kimi-antonelli","12":"tag-motor","13":"tag-motor-sports","14":"tag-motosport","15":"tag-motosports","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-toto-wolff"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129716","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=129716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}