{"id":68441,"date":"2025-08-14T20:01:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T20:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/68441\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T20:01:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T20:01:10","slug":"i-wasnt-ready-at-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/68441\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I wasn’t ready at 18’"},"content":{"rendered":"

After Lewis Hamilton<\/a> decided to join Ferrari<\/a> and as a result leave Mercedes, it was announced that Kimi Antonelli<\/a> will replace him alongside George Russell. The Briton explained he is there to help the rookie driver.Antonelli himself acknowledged ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix<\/a>, where he is finished in P10, that he has been going through a different period in terms of results. Hamilton has also talked to him at Spa-Francorchamps, the Italian also shared.Hamilton there to support Antonelli<\/p>\n

Talking to GPblog among others, Lewis Hamilton, explained: “I always let him (Antonelli) know that I’m there. I think it’s always important to let people know they’re not alone, so let him know that. I try not to encroach, like get in the way or anything like that, but just let them know that you can always lean on me if you have any needs [to].”<\/p>\n

“He’s already got an amazing group of people around him. He’s 18. I mean, I wasn’t ready at 18,” the seven-time world champion continued.<\/p>\n

Hamilton then continued to praise the Italian: “I think this year, particularly the first half of the year, the way he\u2019s jumped in, and I\u2019ve been behind him several times when he\u2019s not budged. So, he\u2019s clearly got the ability.”<\/p>\n

“And it\u2019s just a bad experience. It\u2019s very difficult when you want to succeed, and with all the pressure and everything, it\u2019s sometimes difficult to handle. But I think he\u2019s been doing really, really, really well. And he\u2019s a really great lad,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n

\"LewisTalking to a small group of media, including GPblog, team representative Bradley Lord also talked about Antonelli’s season so far, and also reflected on Hamilton’s support<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lord shared this is “entirely in character with the Lewis that we’ve known for many years,” and Hamilton is a “fantastic ally” for young drivers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After Lewis Hamilton decided to join Ferrari and as a result leave Mercedes, it was announced that Kimi…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68442,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-68441","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\/68441","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=68441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}