{"id":897774,"date":"2026-09-19T13:28:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-19T13:28:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/897774\/"},"modified":"2026-09-19T13:28:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-19T13:28:13","slug":"rob-smedley-explains-peter-bonningtons-key-role-in-kimi-antonellis-f1-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/897774\/","title":{"rendered":"Rob Smedley explains Peter Bonnington’s key role in Kimi Antonelli’s F1 success"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Formula 1 race engineer Rob Smedley says Peter “Bono” Bonnington has been essential to Kimi Antonelli’s 2026 F1 title charge, though he stresses the Mercedes<\/a> driver is the one ultimately responsible for delivering on track.<\/p>\n

Antonelli became the youngest driver to lead the standings after back-to-back wins at the Chinese and Japanese Grands Prix. While many assumed the pressure would eventually take its toll on the 20-year-old, he has gone from strength to strength in his second season in the series.<\/p>\n

The Italian driver claimed his eighth grand prix victory at the Spanish Grand Prix and now holds an 81-point advantage over his team-mate George Russell<\/a>, who sits second in the standings.<\/p>\n

During an episode of the High Performance Racing podcast, Smedley was asked how much credit Antonelli’s race engineer Bonnington, who has previously worked with Lewis Hamilton<\/a> and Michael Schumacher<\/a>, deserves for the impressive 2026 campaign.<\/p>\n

“Bono is everything. Everything. The engineer should get everything,” he joked. “Without the engineer, these lads would be nowhere.”<\/p>\n

He added, more seriously: “He deserves some credit, doesn’t he? Because he keeps him on the straight and narrow. He gives him all the information he needs. But Kimi’s\u00a0the pedal bracket, isn’t he? He’s the one who’s got to deliver on a Sunday afternoon.”<\/p>\n

\"Peter <\/p>\n

Peter Bonnington, Race Engineer, Mercedes<\/p>\n

Photo by: Sam Bagnall \/ Sutton Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Former Alpine<\/a> team principal Otmar Szafnauer, who co-hosts the podcast alongside Smedley and broadcaster Jake Humphrey, added: “[Antonelli’s] part of the feedback loop, too. He tells Bono what he wants, and Bono does it.”<\/p>\n

Antonelli previously described working with Bonnington as a “privilege”.<\/p>\n

“I think having someone like Bono, it\u2019s amazing,” Antonelli explained during the 2025 Chinese Grand Prix weekend. “It\u2019s a very big privilege because he has worked with two of the best drivers in the history of Formula 1 \u2013 he worked with Michael and then he worked with Lewis for so many years.<\/p>\n

“So having someone with so much knowledge and experience, it really helps you because obviously I\u2019ve so many new scenarios that I will have to go through, so many new scenarios that I will have to face, so many new things that I will have to learn, and having someone like him that has so much experience, definitely it\u2019s really helpful because it can really guide you in every situation, and so I feel really lucky to have someone like him.”<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Formula 1 race engineer Rob Smedley says Peter “Bono” Bonnington has been essential to Kimi Antonelli’s 2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":897775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[12295,64,63,817,813,816,254733,945,466493,254732,85,1511],"class_list":["post-897774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-andrea-kimi-antonelli","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-madring","tag-mercedes","tag-rob-smedley-explains-peter-bonningtons-key-role-in-kimi-antonellis-f1-success","tag-spanish-gp","tag-sports","tag-trendingteam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897774","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=897774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/897775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=897774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=897774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=897774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}