Toto Wolff believes that his comments on Kimi Antonelli’s “underwhelming” weekend at Monza might have helped to motivate the youngster, with the Mercedes boss suggesting that it “lit a fire under the a***” of the rookie following two stronger outings in Baku and Singapore.
After a decent start to his maiden campaign in Formula 1, Antonelli faced a tougher run of form during the European leg of the season, during which he recorded four retirements and just two points finishes towards the latter end of the top 10.
This culminated in another difficult outing at the Italian Grand Prix in September, with Antonelli beaching his car in the gravel following a spin off track during FP2.
After a P9 in Sunday’s race, Wolff labelled the 19-year-old’s performance at the Italian Grand Prix in September as “underwhelming”, adding: “You can’t put the car in the gravel bed and then expect to be there.”
However, Antonelli has gone on to enjoy better weekends since, having claimed P4 in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix before crossing the line fifth in Singapore, a track he has never previously raced at.
Speaking to Sky Sports F1 during the weekend at the Marina Bay Street Circuit, Wolff suggested that Antonelli’s approach has changed across recent events.
“Since Baku I think we’ve seen a lot of big focus,” the Team Principal explained. “Certainly Europe hasn’t helped, because there was so much attention on him and expectations were so high.
“I feel like he has less work outside, in terms of media duties and sponsorship duties, and he’s spending all of his time with his engineering team and that’s good.”
Pushed on whether he felt that Antonelli responded well to the kind of remarks he had made after Monza, Wolff responded: “I think it’s a learning process also with Kimi to what he responds well [to], and we’ve always encouraged him, even encouraged [him] to make mistakes because this is the last year of these regulations.
“All the other drivers had got used to these cars – it’s his first year, he doesn’t know the track, he doesn’t know all of this world.
“So for next year everybody starts at zero with a car that you need to learn and, in that respect, I think he’s doing a good job, and it seems to have worked to [have] lit a little bit of fire under the a***, so we’ll see.”
In terms of whether he is seeing qualities in Antonelli that hint at a future potential to win World Championships – and that put him at the level of the likes of team mate George Russell – Wolff added: “This is a very high level already; if you look at George and Max [Verstappen], the skills are so high, and there’s a few others that fall into that bracket.
“I think actually making it into that group would be a success. The junior track record is phenomenal, the best probably that we’ve seen since 10 years – in go-karting [he was] exceptional – but Formula 1 is a different ball game.”
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