George Russell<\/a> for next season.<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n
\u201cWolff’s remarks were at least partly provoked by the fact that Monza was the second race weekend in a row on which Antonelli had crashed in Friday practice and disrupted his preparations,\u201d BBC Sport F1 correspondent Andrew Benson wrote in a Q&A.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 19-year-old’s season started well. He steadily built his confidence in the car, and that led to his outstanding qualifying performances in Miami, where he took pole for the sprint race and out-qualified George Russell for the grand prix as well. He took a maiden podium in Canada, where Russell won.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut a change to the Mercedes rear suspension that made the car more nervous knocked his confidence, and his form has not really recovered since the team reverted to their previous design from Hungary.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s worth pointing out, though, that since Canada, Russell has been on the podium only once.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no immediate threat to Antonelli’s position – he will be a Mercedes driver next year. But he certainly needs to settle down and steadily build again.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Nico Rosberg questions Toto Wolff\u2019s motive<\/p>\n
Former Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg was left surprised by Wolff\u2019s change of course on Antonelli.<\/p>\n
“It’s a surprising one, because at the moment, the only choice you really have is to just give Kimi the most time possible in the most calm way possible, and that means also not criticising him publicly,\u201d Rosberg told The F1 Show.<\/p>\n
“And so this change of tone from Toto for the first time ever\u2026 usually there’s a reason behind it. Toto is very calculated in his comments.<\/p>\n
“Perhaps he’s wanting to put some pressure on Kimi and his family to try a different approach, modify their approach, review their approach.<\/p>\n
“But the fact of the matter is, Kimi is a generational talent, we all know that, but it’s more difficult for him than we all thought so far. And it’s a bit strange that it’s still so difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Antonelli is eighth in the drivers\u2019 championship after 16 out of 24 races this year, 128 points behind fourth-placed Russell.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Subscribe to our F1 Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kimi Antonelli\u2019s seat looks to be safe for next season with \u201cno immediate threat\u201d to his position despite…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149817,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[12295,64,63,817,3875,945,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-149816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-andrea-kimi-antonelli","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-george-russell","tag-mercedes","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149816","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=149816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}