Eddie Irvine believes George Russell and Kimi Antonelli will come to blows in an intra-Mercedes F1 title battle, arguing “the stakes are too high” for it not to.<\/p>\n
The four-time grand prix winner also does not think team principal Toto Wolff can step in and implement team orders, having been through such difficulties with Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg.<\/p>\n
Antonelli has emerged from his more experienced team-mate’s shadow early in the current season. And although he is not yet a match for the British driver over one lap, he does lead the F1 drivers’ standings by nine points, three rounds into the campaign.<\/p>\n
With two victories to his name, the 19-year-old is being regarded as a championship contender \u2014 something Irvine agrees with \u2014 despite Wolff trying to play down the narrative.<\/p>\n
“I first heard about him from Luca Baldisserri, who was my race engineer at Ferrari,” the Irishman told La Gazzetta dello Sport.<\/p>\n
“He described him to me as an extraordinary talent after seeing him in the junior series. And I must admit he was right.<\/p>\n
“It had been a long time since Italy had a driver of this calibre. Kimi is a genuine title contender, but it’s still too early to predict how the season will end.”<\/p>\n
So far, Antonelli and Russell have maintained a strong relationship with the latter comfortably leading the team. But as the dynamic gradually shifts, Irvine expects to see the pair clash.<\/p>\n
Title battles have often led to incidents in the past, and when asked if he feels history will repeat itself with the Mercedes drivers, the 60-year-old drew upon other recent examples.<\/p>\n
“I’m absolutely certain of it,” the former Jordan, Ferrari and Jaguar driver replied.<\/p>\n
“The stakes are too high, and the drivers are performing at a similar level. So Toto Wolff can’t step in with team orders.<\/p>\n
“He’s already experienced very tense situations, when Lewis Hamilton was battling with Nico Rosberg and then with Max Verstappen.<\/p>\n
“On that latter occasion, there was a nasty crash at Silverstone. I think the seven-time world champion, who is one of the cleanest drivers in history, was frustrated because the Dutchman was behaving like a bully.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eddie Irvine believes George Russell and Kimi Antonelli will come to blows in an intra-Mercedes F1 title battle,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":587536,"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-587535","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\/587535","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=587535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/587536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}