{"id":527157,"date":"2026-03-10T16:35:35","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T16:35:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/527157\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T16:35:35","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T16:35:35","slug":"melbourne-crash-shows-kimi-antonelli-is-learning-f1-the-hard-way-toto-wolff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/527157\/","title":{"rendered":"Melbourne crash shows Kimi Antonelli is \u2018learning F1 the hard way\u2019 \u2013 Toto Wolff"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mercedes<\/a> team principal Toto Wolff says Kimi Antonelli<\/a> is \u2018learning Formula 1 the hard way\u2019, following the youngster\u2019s sizeable crash in Free Practice 3 at the Australian Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

Antonelli went off at the end of the final practice session at Melbourne\u2019s Albert Park Circuit, losing control on the Turn 2 kerb and destroying both the front and rear ends of his W17.<\/p>\n

His mechanics managed to repair his Silver Arrow in just two hours ahead of the qualifying session, with Antonelli praising them as \u201cheroes\u201d<\/a>; he went on to qualify in \u2013 and race to \u2013 second place, though this wasn\u2019t as straightforward as it sounds.<\/p>\n

Antonelli lacked energy deployment at the start and dropped to seventh position, so he had to overtake Lando Norris<\/a>, Arvid Lindblad<\/a> (twice) and Isack Hadjar<\/a> as he fought back to fourth; Ferrari<\/a> not pitting under the virtual safety car then comfortably promoted the sophomore to second when the Scuderia finally called its cars in.<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

\u201cHe’s literally learning it the hard way, which makes him stronger,\u201d Wolff commented after the race. \u201cHe was very, very strong on Friday and his pace on Saturday was there. But then the accident happened, and that can happen.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I think it’s a miracle that the mechanics were able to put the car back on track for qualifying. And you can see that it’s just a very solid base of a car and that there wasn’t any set-up on it. He was able to qualify so well and then execute in the race.<\/p>\n

\"Andrea <\/p>\n

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

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

\u201cBoth cars have been harmed to a certain degree with the battery. That contributed also to that starting performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd at the end, it’s a very good second place. He was very fast at the end. He had the pace and there’s more to be expected. And he will expect more from him and we will expect more performance from the car and getting rid of those gremlins. And then having the two race each other fair and square, hopefully with some of the other cars.\u201d<\/p>\n

Remarkably, Antonelli still finished just three seconds behind his race-winning team-mate George Russell<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Asked in the post-race press conference if he always was confident he could fight his way back to the front, the 19-year-old Italian replied: \u201cWell, I didn\u2019t really know, to be fair, but obviously the pace of the car was very strong and the pace was strong too. I felt very, very good in the first stint. Then on the hards, I started to grain very early on and had a bit of a difficult time, but then at the end the pace came back.<\/p>\n

\"Andrea <\/p>\n

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

Photo by: Lars Baron \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cBut of course, the start was a game changer. It obviously was very stressful because I didn\u2019t have power out of the last corner, so the car was not responding to any inputs and it was very stressful, and then the start was poor, very poor, and I just lost a lot of places and found myself having to chase.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the car was very strong. It was good fun at the end, and yeah, the team did an incredible job because I think the result of today was thanks as well, you know, mainly to the mechanics for the incredible job they did yesterday after FP3. So yeah, definitely it was a good end of the weekend and now we will focus on China.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Ronald Vording<\/p>\n

Photos from Australian GP – Sunday<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff says Kimi Antonelli is \u2018learning Formula 1 the hard way\u2019, following the youngster\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":527158,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[3032,107575,49,48,578,204018,576,577,207250,1881,82],"class_list":["post-527157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-andrea-kimi-antonelli","tag-australian-gp","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-f1-australian-grand-prix","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-melbourne-crash-shows-kimi-antonelli-is-u2018learning-f1-the-hard-wayu2019-u2013-toto-wolff","tag-mercedes","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527157","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=527157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}