Kimi Antonelli admits that claiming this year’s Formula 1 title is “not going to be a walk in the park” and has explained Mercedes’ new intra-team orders ahead of this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix.<\/p>\n
The Italian teenager leads the Drivers’ standings<\/a> by 41 points after five consecutive wins before registering his first retirement of the season last time out in Barcelona.<\/p>\n While Antonelli<\/a> retired from P2 with just three laps remaining, Lewis Hamilton was already up the road after a stellar performance and able to take his first Grand Prix victory for Ferrari to become the Mercedes<\/a> driver’s closest challenger.<\/p>\n With Ferrari also bringing a power unit upgrade<\/a> to Austria, Antonelli is aware that Hamilton and the Scuderia could pose a threat over the remainder of the season.<\/p>\n “All of them,” said Antonelli on Thursday’s media day in Austria when asked if he feared Hamilton, team mate George Russell<\/a> or reliability problems the most.<\/p>\n “But it’s not worried or concerned. I’m aware that it’s not going to be a walk in the park. It’s going to be a tough battle because George is super quick, Lewis is in a great moment and is feeling the car and momentum.<\/p>\n “Definitely is going to be a tough battle, that’s why it’s going to be important to maximise every opportunity because Barcelona I had the issue at the end and lost a lot of points.<\/p>\n “Whenever I can, I just need to maximise everything because you never know what can happen. I wouldn’t write off the others either, I think you look what Max [Verstappen] did last year coming back from so far, that’s why it’s important to always be present, stay focused and just do your best.”<\/p>\n Antonelli and Russell went wheel-to-wheel again in Barcelona, allowing Hamilton to rejoin in the lead after his final stop under the Virtual Safety Car.<\/p>\n Mercedes<\/a> Team Principal Toto Wolff explained after the race in Spain that the team might need to look at how it handles an intra-team battle<\/a> if another driver is in contention for the title, with Antonelli confiming a new approach this weekend.<\/p>\n “How we go racing, I think it will really depend on the situation,” he said. “If we are under threat by other teams then we will race differently, but if it’s just me and him [Russell] we are going to be able to race free.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kimi Antonelli admits that claiming this year’s Formula 1 title is “not going to be a walk in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":760901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-760900","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\/760900","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=760900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/760901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=760900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=760900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=760900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}