Toto Wolff believes that his comments on Kimi Antonelli\u2019s \u201cunderwhelming\u201d weekend at Monza might have helped to motivate the youngster, with the Mercedes boss suggesting that it \u201clit a fire under the a***\u201d of the rookie following two stronger outings in Baku and Singapore.<\/p>\n
After a decent start to his maiden campaign in Formula 1, Antonelli<\/a> faced a tougher run of form during the European leg of the season, during which he recorded four retirements and just two points finishes towards the latter end of the top 10.<\/p>\n This culminated in another difficult outing at the Italian Grand Prix in September, with Antonelli beaching his car in the gravel following a spin off track during FP2.<\/p>\n After a P9 in Sunday\u2019s race, Wolff labelled the 19-year-old\u2019s performance at the Italian Grand Prix in September as \u201cunderwhelming\u201d<\/a>, adding: \u201cYou can’t put the car in the gravel bed and then expect to be there.\u201d<\/p>\n However, Antonelli has gone on to enjoy better weekends since, having claimed P4 in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix before crossing the line fifth in Singapore<\/a>, a track he has never previously raced at.<\/p>\n Speaking to Sky Sports F1 during the weekend at the Marina Bay Street Circuit, Wolff<\/a> suggested that Antonelli\u2019s approach has changed across recent events.<\/p>\n \u201cSince Baku I think we\u2019ve seen a lot of big focus,\u201d the Team Principal explained. \u201cCertainly Europe hasn\u2019t helped, because there was so much attention on him and expectations were so high.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like he has less work outside, in terms of media duties and sponsorship duties, and he\u2019s spending all of his time with his engineering team and that\u2019s good.\u201d<\/p>\n Pushed on whether he felt that Antonelli responded well to the kind of remarks he had made after Monza, Wolff responded: \u201cI think it\u2019s a learning process also with Kimi to what he responds well [to], and we\u2019ve always encouraged him, even encouraged [him] to make mistakes because this is the last year of these regulations.<\/p>\n \u201cAll the other drivers had got used to these cars \u2013 it\u2019s his first year, he doesn\u2019t know the track, he doesn\u2019t know all of this world.<\/p>\n \u201cSo for next year everybody starts at zero with a car that you need to learn and, in that respect, I think he\u2019s doing a good job, and it seems to have worked to [have] lit a little bit of fire under the a***, so we\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n In terms of whether he is seeing qualities in Antonelli that hint at a future potential to win World Championships \u2013 and that put him at the level of the likes of team mate George Russell<\/a> \u2013 Wolff added: \u201cThis is a very high level already; if you look at George and Max [Verstappen]<\/a>, the skills are so high, and there\u2019s a few others that fall into that bracket.<\/p>\n \u201cI think actually making it into that group would be a success. The junior track record is phenomenal, the best probably that we\u2019ve seen since 10 years \u2013 in go-karting [he was] exceptional \u2013 but Formula 1 is a different ball game.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Toto Wolff believes that his comments on Kimi Antonelli\u2019s \u201cunderwhelming\u201d weekend at Monza might have helped to motivate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200940,"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-200939","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\/200939","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=200939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}