Kimi Antonelli has set out his goal to \u201ceventually fight for the World Championship\u201d as he prepares for his second season in Formula 1, one in which he is \u201creally looking forward\u201d to competing against team mate George Russell.<\/p>\n
Following on from the Barcelona Shakedown, Antonelli<\/a> joined the rest of the Mercedes<\/a> squad for their official launch event<\/a> on Monday, just over one week before the car next hits the track during official pre-season testing in Bahrain<\/a>.<\/p>\n While Antonelli\u2019s F1 career is still in its early days, the Italian was quizzed on how he would feel if he and the Silver Arrows<\/a> were in a position to battle for the championship in the campaign ahead.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s absolutely the goal,\u201d Antonelli responded. \u201cThe goal is to win and to eventually fight for the World Championship \u2013 that\u2019s my goal, and the goal is to win and to be one of the best, so definitely that\u2019s what I want.<\/p>\n \u201cOf course George is very, very strong and definitely is ready to fight for a championship, and he\u2019s one of the benchmarks on the grid. I think it\u2019s going to be quite fun, especially competing with him, so I\u2019m really looking forward to it.\u201d<\/p>\n Having gained his first experience of driving the 2026 car during the Barcelona Shakedown, Antonelli spoke positively about his experiences behind the wheel of the W17.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the car, as a baseline to start with, is pretty good,\u201d he explained. \u201cIt\u2019s much better than expected and it\u2019s fun to drive.<\/p>\n \u201cObviously the car being a bit smaller, you feel it \u2013 it\u2019s more agile, especially in changes of direction and in slow-speed corners which is a nice feeling, plus we don\u2019t have bouncing anymore which is another good thing, so you don\u2019t have to run the car as low and you have a bit more room to play with ride heights.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have a bit more room to play with the set-up, to play with the car, which is super nice and super interesting as well as a driver, to also understand what compromises you can find set-up-wise.\u201d<\/p>\n Antonelli also believes that the introduction of new regulations<\/a> could offer a \u201cbig opportunity\u201d on the driving side for those who can quickly adapt, but the teenager also cautioned: \u201cOn the other side, experience still counts with how you approach the year and every weekend.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve done one year in F1 and I\u2019ve learned a lot, but this year I will have a different approach. I feel I still need to learn quite a bit. I\u2019ve had a bit of time to reflect on last season, to understand and to analyse the weekends that went well and why they went well, and the weekends that went bad and why they went bad.<\/p>\n \u201cAhead of this year I will keep the things that helped me, but on the other hand I will change some approaches that didn\u2019t really feel the best for me last year, to help me out, to prepare myself better and to feel better ahead of the race weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n This was a sentiment echoed by Team Principal Toto Wolff<\/a>, who suggested that \u2013 while he expects to see progression in Antonelli \u2013 he is not anticipating the youngster to be at the same level as Russell<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no doubt about his speed and about his race craft \u2013 he\u2019s going into his second season, he knows all the tracks, he knows all of you guys [media], he knows all the other requirements, so I\u2019m absolutely certain it will be a good year for him,\u201d Wolff said of Antonelli.<\/p>\n \u201cHaving said that, I don\u2019t think we should expect him to be like George all the time \u2013 George is one of the best ones, he\u2019s been in Formula 1 a long time, he\u2019s a benchmark, and Kimi\u2019s 19 and he\u2019s going into his second season. We\u2019re going to see another step [from Kimi], that I\u2019m certain about.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kimi Antonelli has set out his goal to \u201ceventually fight for the World Championship\u201d as he prepares for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-453672","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\/453672","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=453672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}