{"id":766353,"date":"2026-06-28T20:13:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T20:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/766353\/"},"modified":"2026-06-28T20:13:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T20:13:12","slug":"kimi-antonelli-identifies-crucial-problems-that-cost-him-f1-austrian-gp-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/766353\/","title":{"rendered":"Kimi Antonelli identifies crucial problems that cost him F1 Austrian GP win"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andrea Kimi Antonelli struggled to make up for his qualifying error in the Austrian Grand Prix<\/a>, taking his second worst race result of the season at the Red Bull Ring.<\/p>\n

After a mechanical DNF in Barcelona, championship leader Antonelli would have been hoping to extend his gap to Hamilton and Russell in the standings. Instead he was met with more mistakes and car problems. <\/p>\n

Max Verstappen\u2019s Q3 crash and Antonelli\u2019s subsequent yellow flag blunder left him to qualify in P4. This position that was quickly jeopardised in the race following a poor start and issue-ridden first stint.<\/p>\n

The Italian might have been overconfident after topping the times in both Friday practice sessions, saying he may have \u2018lowered the intensity\u2019 too much going into Saturday and Sunday. Referring to the Verstappen crash\/yellow flag incident, he added that without aborting his last lap he still believes he didn\u2019t have the pace of his teammate.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, it was a weekend where I started very strong and I think because of that, I kind of lowered the intensity a bit too much. And, coming to qualifying, I just felt a bit tense driving-wise.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re still up there, but I felt like I wasn\u2019t driving that well and not as free. And, of course the last lap, it went like that, but I was a tenth behind George. So it probably would have been, P2, very close, but of course it went like that.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously starting from P4, [the] first laps were really bad for me. And then I really struggled with brakes. I just lost a lot of time because I started to do mistakes. But yeah, then second stint was a bit better. And then third stint was really, very strong.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pace was just there, but of course [I] fell a bit short.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"KimiKimi Antonelli finished third, with Mercedes teammate George Russell taking the win<\/p>\n

Could Antonelli have challenged Russell for the win?<\/p>\n

Antonelli still showed moments of pace throughout and may have been able to better challenge for positions had he delivered a better start. He crossed the line just three tenths behind Verstappen, who was in turn only 1.6 seconds away from Russell.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole first stint, I think at the end of the first stint that is, [a] couple of mistakes and I lost probably one second, one and a half seconds, each lap. Because one time I went off, almost went off in Turn 4, one lap I went off in Turn 3. So I lost a lot of time, but of course it\u2019s, I think, easy to say now. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe mistakes were made and, I mean, you know, without them [I] probably could have had the chance to fight for P2 or even P1. But of course, easy to say now and need to make sure they don\u2019t happen again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Excluding his DNF, P3 is Antonelli\u2019s lowest finishing position in 2026.<\/p>\n

READ MORE \u2013 George Russell resists Max Verstappen challenge in Austria to reignite F1 title hopes<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andrea Kimi Antonelli struggled to make up for his qualifying error in the Austrian Grand Prix, taking his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":766354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[100594,64,63,364889,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-766353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-antonelli","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-austriangp","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766353","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=766353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/766354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=766353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=766353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=766353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}