{"id":128626,"date":"2025-09-08T10:51:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T10:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/128626\/"},"modified":"2025-09-08T10:51:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T10:51:07","slug":"mercedes-boss-wolff-antonelli-underwhelming-at-italian-gp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/128626\/","title":{"rendered":"Mercedes boss Wolff: Antonelli ‘underwhelming’ at Italian GP"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff admitted struggling rookie Kimi Antonelli<\/a>‘s entire Italian Grand Prix was “underwhelming” but has reaffirmed his belief in the teenager as a future superstar.<\/p>\n

Antonelli struggled at his home race, qualifying seventh and finishing ninth.<\/p>\n

Antonelli, 19, spun out of second practice and then during the grand prix received a black-and-white final warning flag for repeated track limit violations and was given a five-second penalty for running Williams driver Alex Albon off the road.<\/p>\n

“Underwhelming this weekend. Underwhelming,” Wolff said about the rookie’s race. “You can’t put the car in the gravel bed and expect to be there. All of the race was underwhelming.<\/p>\n

“It doesn’t change anything on my support and confidence in his future because I believe he’s going to be very, very, very good. But today was … underwhelming.”<\/p>\n

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has criticised Kimi Antonelli for his Monza showing but insists he still has his backing.\u00a0Andrea Diodato\/NurPhoto via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Despite huge excitement about his talent and a breakthrough podium at the Canadian Grand Prix in June, Antonelli’s form has been in a spiral lately.<\/p>\n

Mercedes has acknowledged this season as a steep learning curve for Antonelli, who replaced Lewis Hamilton<\/a>, statistically the greatest driver in the history of the sport.<\/p>\n

Wolff, who briefly eyed four-time world champion Max Verstappen<\/a> as an option for 2026, has confirmed Antonelli will continue alongside George Russell<\/a> into 2026.<\/p>\n

When asked how Mercedes can unlock the youngster’s potential, Wolff said they need to find a way to remove the pressure he carries with him.<\/p>\n

– McLaren walking a ‘fairness’ tightrope with Norris, Piastri<\/a>
– Verstappen: Monza win ‘better than expected’<\/a>
– Vasseur: ‘Disappointed’ not to podium for Tifosi<\/a><\/p>\n

“Just freeing him up. Freeing him up,” Wolff said. “You know, he’s a great driver. He has this unbelievable ability and natural talent. He’s a race driver. It’s all there. But we need to get rid of the ballast.”<\/p>\n

He added: “I think a clean weekend means almost not to carry too much trauma of previous mistakes into the next session or into the next weekend because that is [baggage]. You’re not going to attack the corner hard if you’ve been off there before you’ve finished your session or maybe you’re not attacking a driver that should not be in your way.”<\/p>\n

Antonelli is eighth in the championship, 124 points behind Russell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mercedes boss Toto Wolff admitted struggling rookie Kimi Antonelli‘s entire Italian Grand Prix was “underwhelming” but has reaffirmed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128627,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-128626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}