Kimi Antonelli has admitted he doubted his own F1 abilities when he endured a difficult run of form midway through the season.<\/p>\n
Antonelli joined the F1 grid with Mercedes earlier this year, replacing seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton.<\/p>\n
While he started the year with a string of respectable performances, he soon suffered a blip in form and went on a difficult stretch during which he often failed to score points.<\/p>\n
His season ended on a higher note as he returned to the points on a more consistent basis, as well as bagging a back-to-back podiums in Sao Paulo and Las Vegas<\/p>\n
But when asked if he had ever doubted himself during the year, Antonelli told media including RacingNews365: \u201cFor sure, many times. Since we went on the new suspension, I struggled quite a lot, especially to adapt.<\/p>\n
\u201cGeorge, on the other hand, despite that we lost performance with the new suspension, was able to adapt \u2014 and I struggled quite a lot more.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I just entered this negative spiral where it felt like it kept getting worse and worse, and frustration was just taking over.\u201d<\/p>\n
Antonelli labelled the final race weekend before the summer break at Spa-Francorchamps as his low point of the year.<\/p>\n
The 19-year-old suffered a Q1 exit and was unable to make up ground to score points on Sunday. However, after calling a large meeting soon after to review his struggles, Antonelli highlighted it served as a major boost for his performance.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think my darkest moment was Spa, probably,\u201d he said. \u201cI definitely doubted myself a lot, because obviously seeing the results not coming, you start to ask yourself if you\u2019re good enough,\u201d\u00a0he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t easy, but that\u2019s why I did a big meeting with the team after Monza. I did a big reset mentally and just tried to refocus on important stuff \u2014 on the process \u2014 and that really helped.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was a big learning as well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kimi Antonelli has admitted he doubted his own F1 abilities when he endured a difficult run of form…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361501,"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":{"0":"post-380787","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-daniel-ricciardo","11":"tag-f1-calendar","12":"tag-f1-live","13":"tag-f1-results","14":"tag-f1-standings","15":"tag-ferrari","16":"tag-formula-1","17":"tag-lewis-hamilton","18":"tag-max-verstappen","19":"tag-motor","20":"tag-motor-sports","21":"tag-motorsport","22":"tag-motosport","23":"tag-motosports","24":"tag-racing","25":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380787","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=380787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}