{"id":916084,"date":"2026-10-01T03:12:19","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T03:12:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/916084\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T03:12:19","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T03:12:19","slug":"kimi-antonelli-has-spooked-himself-amid-f1-title-pressure-says-naomi-schiff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/916084\/","title":{"rendered":"Kimi Antonelli has “spooked himself” amid F1 title pressure, says Naomi Schiff"},"content":{"rendered":"

Championship leader Kimi Antonelli has “spooked himself” and must “get out of his head” to avoid crumbling under the pressure of the Formula 1 fight, according to pundit Naomi Schiff.<\/p>\n

The Mercedes<\/a> driver arrived at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix with a commanding 81-point lead. But that advantage was reduced to 66 points after team-mate George Russell<\/a> successfully converted pole position to a race win, while Antonelli finished fifth after starting from 16th on the grid.<\/p>\n

Speaking on the Up To Speed podcast<\/a>, former W Series driver and Sky Sports F1 pundit Schiff warned that the Italian driver’s body language in Baku suggested he was starting to feel the pressure of his maiden championship fight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I felt like when I was looking at\u00a0Kimi on track this weekend and not just the mistake that he made [in qualifying], but just his general demeanour on track, it felt like a driver who’s driving for that championship, but has almost spooked himself a little bit too much,”\u00a0Schiff explained.<\/p>\n

“So he feels a little bit stiff in the car because he doesn’t want to make a mistake. And that’s also not the right place to be in.”<\/p>\n

\"Andrea <\/p>\n

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

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

She added: “He just needs to get out of his head. And we’ve seen it happen before. Last season he was in his head a lot as well. He managed to get that under control, and then he was driving more freely. He came into the beginning of the season a new man.<\/p>\n

“I really hope that he’s not going to spook himself out of this because it is so easy. It’s such a psychological game that once you get in your head, you start worrying about things. You almost bring those things to yourself. So I hope he can free himself up.”<\/p>\n

Although Antonelli endured a difficult weekend in Baku, he still holds a 66-point lead in the drivers’ championship over his team-mate Russell, who sits in second.<\/p>\n

We want your opinion!<\/p>\n

What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?<\/p>\n

Take our 5 minute survey.<\/a><\/p>\n

– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Championship leader Kimi Antonelli has “spooked himself” and must “get out of his head” to avoid crumbling under…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":916085,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[3032,315894,49,48,578,576,577,315905,1881,284191,294079,82,4962],"class_list":["post-916084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-andrea-kimi-antonelli","tag-bahrain-gp-in-malaysia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-kimi-antonelli-has-spooked-himself-amid-f1-title-pressure","tag-mercedes","tag-says-naomi-schiff","tag-sepang-international-circuit","tag-sports","tag-trendingteam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916084","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=916084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/916085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=916084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=916084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=916084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}