Former Formula 1 driver Thierry Boutsen believes Kimi Antonelli will drive in a similar way to George Russell in a few years, no longer being as “very aggressive” as he currently is.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Antonelli has been mesmeric across the opening half of the 2026 F1 season, winning six of the 11 races and building a 50-point lead over Lewis Hamilton.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Russell finds himself a further nine points adrift and has faced several setbacks this campaign, both with his own pace and Mercedes’ reliability.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
It is the championship leader who has largely had the edge across the entire year so far, often demonstrating aggressive displays when needed.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Russell’s approach has been calmer than aggressive, although Boutsen believes that the way Antonelli currently drives is no different from how the Briton drove at the start of his career.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“I think if you take George from his first F1 season, he would have been as aggressive as Kimi,” Boutsen told F1’s official website.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“But he\u2019s learned a lot, he\u2019s calmed down also, he\u2019s got more maturity. He races a totally different way. I believe that Kimi will be the same in three, four years. He will drive very differently to today.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“Today, he\u2019s very aggressive and takes every single opportunity, although sometimes it is like Canada, where he went off a few times. Track limits as well.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s very different moments in their careers that would explain the difference. For the long run, I don\u2019t know who\u2019s going to win. It\u2019s very difficult to say. They\u2019re both very, very good drivers.”\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Formula 1 driver Thierry Boutsen believes Kimi Antonelli will drive in a similar way to George Russell…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":851362,"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":["post-851361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851361","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=851361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/851362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}