Kimi Antonelli has stated his end-of-race defence against Max Verstappen was \u201cway too stressful\u201d at the S\u00e3o Paulo Grand Prix.<\/p>\n
Antonelli secured a career-best second place on Sunday as he held off Verstappen’s pursuit in the closing stages of the race.<\/p>\n
It marked the Italian driver’s second podium of the season and offered a considerable boost for the rookie, who has endured a series of disappointing results this year.<\/p>\n
Verstappen made his final pit stop on lap 54, switching to the soft compound while Antonelli circled on an older medium compound.<\/p>\n
Verstappen closed on Antonelli in the final laps but couldn’t pull off a move for the runner-up spot.<\/p>\n
When asked how stressful he found the closing laps of the grand prix, Antonelli told media including RacingNews365: \u201cWay too stressful.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Max did the last pit stop and Bono told me the gap, I was like – ah well, I cannot say because they’re going to fine me now – but I was like ‘I might be in trouble’.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was just nine seconds behind, he was on new softs, this race he had very strong pace.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe did an amazing job coming back and he just put me under a lot of pressure at the end. I had to really push the tyre to the limit, and it wasn’t easy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I think we did our best and I’m really happy with that.\u201d<\/p>\n
With Vegas next on the F1 schedule, Mercedes is being tipped to have a strong weekend in the colder conditions.<\/p>\n
Antonelli has highlighted he will apply the learnings from his successful event in Brazil in an attempt to round out the season on a high.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did the best,\u201d he said. \u201cOn my side, I tried to learn as much as possible every session in order to improve for the next one.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a lot of good fun. The support here has been incredible, and it\u2019s been one of the most special weekends so far.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kimi Antonelli has stated his end-of-race defence against Max Verstappen was \u201cway too stressful\u201d at the S\u00e3o Paulo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278867,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":["post-278866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278866","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=278866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278866\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}