Last year, Kimi Antonelli was going through a slump when he travelled to Monza for his home race. And even on the high-speed Italian circuit, things didn\u2019t go to plan for the curly-haired driver, who was competing in his first GP season in 2025. In the race, he had to settle for ninth place. And Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff had some critical words for the driver from Bologna.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy prot\u00e9g\u00e9 is making too many mistakes,\u201d said the Viennese boss, and Antonelli responded with understanding. \u201cHe was referring to Sunday\u2019s Grand Prix and I agree with him: it wasn\u2019t my best race. But I\u2019m taking it in a positive light and using it as motivation to do even better this weekend,\u201d he explained ahead of the following race in Baku, where he got back on track with a fourth-place finish.<\/p>\n
Kimi Antonelli is drawing on his wealth of experience<\/p>\n
A year later, he travels to his home race at the Royal Park as the championship leader. And hopes are correspondingly high that he will make amends. Although he will have to start from the back of the grid due to the use of a new power unit, which exceeds the permitted quota. But Antonelli is relaxed. He is relying on his wealth of experience, as he emphasises in an interview with Lawrence Barretto for \u2018Formula1.com\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cExperience plays a huge role, of course. Of course, there\u2019s still a lot I need to learn first-hand. But I think that last year\u2019s tough moments and difficult phases helped me mature even more than I\u2019d expected. It\u2019s made me stronger, both emotionally and mentally,\u201d explains the 20-year-old, looking back.<\/p>\n
He isn\u2019t bothered by the fact that the pressure has increased due to his role as championship leader and the popularity he enjoys in Italy and around the world. \u201cI enjoy it,\u201d says Antonelli. \u201cOf course, there are times when, unfortunately, you can\u2019t please everyone, but I try to make the best of it. I want to enjoy the race weekends as much as possible, and of course it\u2019s intense, but at the same time I also try to have a bit of fun with the mechanics during those moments when I\u2019m not in the car \u2013 especially on Thursdays. Because that\u2019s the best time for it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last year, Kimi Antonelli was going through a slump when he travelled to Monza for his home race.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":874076,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-874075","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\/874075","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=874075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/874076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=874075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=874075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=874075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}