{"id":30592,"date":"2025-07-29T18:33:16","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T18:33:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/30592\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T18:33:16","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T18:33:16","slug":"mercedes-chief-kimi-antonelli-fed-up-amid-wrong-steps-with-car","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/30592\/","title":{"rendered":"Mercedes chief: Kimi Antonelli ‘fed up’ amid ‘wrong steps’ with car"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mercedes have made mistakes in developing their Formula 1 car and teenage Italian rookie Kimi Antonelli<\/a>‘s struggles are a consequence of that, according to technical director James Allison.<\/p>\n

Antonelli, 18, finished third in Canada in June for his first F1 podium but has since failed to score.<\/p>\n

He has had two retirements since Montreal as well as 17th in a sprint race in Belgium last Saturday and then 16th in Sunday’s main grand prix.<\/p>\n

The Italian, who took a sprint pole in Miami and is the sport’s youngest ever race leader, has retired four times in the last seven rounds and admitted in Belgium<\/a> he was lacking confidence in the car and not driving as he would like.<\/p>\n

“I think he’s, like the rest of us, massively fed up with a string of results that are well below what we were collectively achieving earlier in the year,” Allison said in a Belgian race debrief on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Kimi Antonelli has struggled for form recently at Mercedes.\u00a0Mark Sutton – Formula 1\/Formula 1 via Getty Images<\/p>\n

“I hope he takes some solace from the fact that we tell him, and it’s demonstrably a fact, that we have taken the wrong steps with the car, making our team less competitive, and that he is paying the price for that, as is George [Russell]<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“If the car isn’t where it needs to be, then it will be a struggle getting through the qualifying stages in your rookie season in F1.”<\/p>\n

Allison said it was “utterly clear” to everyone that the car needed to be better and Antonelli’s fortunes would improve when it was.<\/p>\n

“Hopefully he’s listening to us as we say those reassuring words because we absolutely know that he is putting in the effort on his side of that bargain,” he added.<\/p>\n

Mercedes are third overall, 28 points behind second-placed Ferrari, with one win by Russell in Canada. Russell has been on the podium five times and is fourth overall with 157 points to Antonelli’s 63.<\/p>\n

– Antonelli admits his form has taken ‘backward step’<\/a>
– Mercedes call for meeting after Belgian GP<\/a>
– Verstappen staying at Red Bull for 2026 – Marko<\/a><\/p>\n

Seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton<\/a>, whose seat Antonelli took when the Briton moved to Ferrari, showed his support<\/a> for the Italian after Saturday qualifying at Spa.<\/p>\n

“He was telling me to keep my head up, and that it’s normal to have bad weekends, and to just keep believing,” the Italian told reporters.<\/p>\n

Hamilton told Sky Sports television he could not imagine what the rookie was going through.<\/p>\n

“He’s been doing fantastic. But to be thrown in at the deep end at 18 … he hadn’t even had his driving licence when he first started racing,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mercedes have made mistakes in developing their Formula 1 car and teenage Italian rookie Kimi Antonelli‘s struggles are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-30592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30592","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=30592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}