Kimi Antonelli has admitted to taking the \u201cbiggest lessons\u201d from his last two race weekends after experiencing issues in both, with the Italian stating that this has left him with a \u201cfire inside\u201d ahead of the British Grand Prix.<\/p>\n
A technical issue on his Mercedes<\/a> saw Antonelli<\/a> record his first DNF of the season in Barcelona, while a mistake in Qualifying at the next round in Austria cost the youngster a potential spot on the front row of the grid, leaving him with extra work to do on Sunday from P4.<\/p>\n Antonelli\u2019s recovery drive saw him nearly catch Max Verstappen<\/a> for P2 on race day, but a victory for team mate George Russell<\/a> \u2013 who has returned to second place in the Drivers\u2019 Championship<\/a> \u2013 means that the 19-year-old\u2019s lead is now down to 40 points.<\/p>\n Despite those setbacks, Antonelli is confident that the momentum remains with him arriving into Silverstone.<\/p>\n \u201cI have a big fire inside me because I think the last two races obviously didn’t go well, considering the pace we had,\u201d he explained during Thursday\u2019s media day. \u201cI think in Barcelona, the race was going well but obviously we had the issue which was unfortunate.<\/p>\n \u201cIn Austria I felt very good in the car, but in Qualifying I relaxed a little bit too much during the session and just didn’t extract the best out of the car, the tyres. And then obviously there was the thing with the yellow flag, which George managed well \u2013 he did what he had to do.<\/p>\n \u201cMy side, I just didn’t do a good enough job, also the timing was not the best for me because I was just entering the corner. Then in Austria I think I lost the race in the first stint with the first laps going off.<\/p>\n \u201cI struggled with the brakes and lost a lot of time, so I feel like obviously without that it would have given me a better chance to fight for the victory, or at least for P2. For sure it’s been, let’s not say a difficult couple of races because still we were up there, but definitely looking forward to this weekend to put things more together and maximise better the result.\u201d<\/p>\n Antonelli went on to explain the learnings he has taken from those recent events, adding: \u201cDefinitely one of the biggest lessons is that you have to be ready for anything and be ready to take every opportunity, and [that you] always have to maximise every session because you never know what can happen.<\/p>\n \u201cIt can happen that you have bad weekends where you just don’t feel great in the car, so the biggest lesson was never let your guard down and just always stay hungry and always try to maximise everything.<\/p>\n \u201cOf course, I feel there’s a big fire inside me ahead of this weekend, but of course still remembering to focus on the procedure, on what I have to do, and trying to drive as fast as I can.\u201d<\/p>\n In terms of his prospects for the British Grand Prix<\/a>, Antonelli believes that the W17 will perform well \u2013 but also acknowledged the threat posed by the Silver Arrows\u2019 rivals on a weekend where the Sprint will make its fourth appearance of the season.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m very excited. I think it’s one of the best weekends of the season and one of the best tracks and crowds, so I\u2019m really looking forward to it,\u201d the championship leader said.<\/p>\n \u201cHopefully it’s going to be a good weekend \u2013 the car is very strong, but of course we expect Red Bull<\/a>, McLaren<\/a> and Ferrari<\/a> to be up there as well. I\u2019m really looking forward to it and also it\u2019s a Sprint weekend, so it\u2019s going to be a good challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kimi Antonelli has admitted to taking the \u201cbiggest lessons\u201d from his last two race weekends after experiencing issues…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":775062,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-775061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775061","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=775061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/775062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=775061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=775061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=775061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}