{"id":159027,"date":"2025-09-21T10:32:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-21T10:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/159027\/"},"modified":"2025-09-21T10:32:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T10:32:08","slug":"why-kimi-antonelli-refrained-from-looking-at-crashed-f1-cars-during-baku-qualifying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/159027\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Kimi Antonelli refrained from looking at crashed F1 cars during Baku qualifying"},"content":{"rendered":"

Formula 1 qualifying at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix turned into crashfest with many red flags, but Andrea Kimi Antonelli<\/a> kept his cool with a surprisingly good qualifying performance.<\/p>\n

After a tough European leg, the young Italian secured fourth place on the Baku grid \u2013 a welcome boost to his confidence.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pace has been strong the whole weekend, and definitely the biggest difference has been that I was able to do clean sessions and to build it up. I felt pretty ready for qualifying,\u201d Antonelli said.<\/p>\n

The Mercedes<\/a> driver stayed out of trouble, even though he had to visit the stewards for allegedly ignoring yellow flags during qualifying. That was handled with a reprimand, meaning Antonelli will start from fourth on the grid. It equals his best qualifying result so far for a grand prix, although the 19-year-old previously took pole for the sprint race in Miami.<\/p>\n

With fourth place in qualifying for the main event, Antonelli matched his performance from Bahrain and Canada \u2013 but this time he has outqualified team-mate George Russell<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

Despite all these positives, Antonelli made clear that qualifying was far from easy: \u201cThe conditions were very difficult with the wind. The wind was kind of a lottery because it was very gusty and very unpredictable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli\"Mercedes'<\/p>\n

Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli<\/p>\n

The rookie wasn\u2019t even entirely satisfied when he appeared in the media pen. \u201cI’m happy but disappointed at the same time, because in that last lap, I got a gust of tailwind and lost a couple of tenths \u2013 two or three tenths,\u201d he lamented.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the conditions were difficult for everyone. Sometimes you get a bit lucky with the wind and other times a bit unlucky, so I cannot really complain.\u201d<\/p>\n

When pointed out that he didn’t make any major mistakes, the Mercedes driver laughed: \u201cWell, that’s because they didn’t really show my last lap! I had two big moments, one in T2 and one in Turn 7. I went full lock. I had quite a few moments, but this weekend the goal was to stay on the safe side a bit more, just trying to build it and then push more lap by lap.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes\"Andrea<\/p>\n

Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes<\/p>\n

Besides the conditions, another factor made qualifying in Baku extremely challenging: the mental side of things.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

All drivers in Baku were faced with the question: how much risk are you willing to take? With several cars out, a strong result was within reach, but these accidents did show how easily things can go wrong in the streets of Baku.<\/p>\n

When asked about that mental side of things by Motorsport.com, Antonelli admitted candidly that this played an important role during his qualifying session: \u201cYou never like seeing someone going into the wall, because it can hit your mind a bit. You see how tricky the conditions are, and you can lose a bit of focus and start to be concerned, because you know you have no margin for mistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is why Antonelli sometimes prefers not to follow everything that happens very closely. \u201cSometimes I prefer not to watch,\u201d he conceded. \u201cWhat can happen to me sometimes is that I go on track and I don’t push as much anymore just because I’m afraid of doing mistakes. So, today was super tricky, but I\u2019m happy with how we stayed calm and composed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

What changed to cause so many red flags in F1 Azerbaijan GP qualifying? <\/a><\/p>\n

To read more Motorsport.com articles visit our website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Formula 1 qualifying at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix turned into crashfest with many red flags, but Andrea Kimi…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[3032,16007,10007,49,48,578,576,83033,577,82],"class_list":["post-159027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-andrea-kimi-antonelli","tag-antonelli","tag-baku","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula-1-qualifying","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159027","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=159027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}