![\"Andrea](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/20240727OP-0002.jpg.webp\"\/)
<\/p>\n\u201cThen I start to interact and get my first impression, my feeling of how the kid interacts with you, how he answers questions. I observe how he is with his team, how he handles the weekend through the good and bad moments, the complete process.\u201d<\/p>\n
With Antonelli, that process didn\u2019t need long.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith Kimi, I saw almost from day one that I was dealing with a different kid,\u201d Lagrue says. \u201cWhat impressed me \u2014 well, amazed me \u2014 was his natural presence.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone liked Kimi, everyone was hugging him. He was like the Kimi you see today when he was 11.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the part of the story easy to romanticise, and Lagrue is careful not to let it stand alone. He measured Antonelli against machinery, against bad luck, against how he recovered from a poor heat \u2014 not against a scoreboard that, on paper, didn\u2019t yet mark him out.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was not dominating because he didn\u2019t have the right equipment,\u201d Lagrue recalls, \u201cbut he was by far the best of his team and maximised what he had.\u201d<\/p>\n
The proof came once the equipment caught up: switched to a front-running team for 2018, \u201che was just flying, dominating everything. Whatever the conditions, rain, hot, cold, he was at the top of his game in Minis that year.\u201d<\/p>\n
A jump that typically unsettles young karters \u2014 from Mini to Junior category, with its higher grip and faster kart behaviour \u2014 barely bothered him.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe adapted after two sessions,\u201d Lagrue says, citing a Kart Republic boss who \u201chadn\u2019t seen something like that for years.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Antonelli made the jump to F2 straight from karting<\/p>\n
\n Grand Prix Photo\n <\/p>\n
The Mercedes contribution, in Lagrue\u2019s account, wasn\u2019t really about spotting the talent. That was, relatively speaking, the easy part.<\/p>\n
It was the shaping of it afterwards: physical development from a driver he calls \u201ca little bird\u201d fresh out of karting, and tellingly, teaching a people-pleaser to say no.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe likes to please people,\u201d Lagrue says, \u201cand sometimes we need to teach him to say no.\u201d<\/p>\n
The toughest test wasn\u2019t a crash or a slump in machinery, it was Antonelli\u2019s F2 season, skipped into straight from Formula 4, where Mercedes\u2019 junior struggled to adapt to a new car.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the first time I saw Kimi dealing with difficult times,\u201d Lagrue says. \u201cHe was winning \u2014 not easily \u2014 before, but in F2 it was tough.\u201d<\/p>\n
What Lagrue took from it wasn\u2019t the results, but the response: Antonelli \u201cbecame a clear leader, trying to find the solutions to get the team back in front.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a theme that recurs when Lagrue talks about Antonelli\u2019s on-track style now: a driver who has to be reined in rather than pushed.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was sometimes overpushing a little and we had to teach him instead of always being at 110%, just be at 100%,\u201d Lagrue says. \u201cHe\u2019s someone who will always try, he will try harder, he will explore a bit more than others where the limit is.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThen I start to interact and get my first impression, my feeling of how the kid interacts with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":839477,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,25251,82],"class_list":["post-839476","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-kimi-antonelli","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839476","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=839476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/839477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=839476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=839476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=839476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}