Kimi Antonelli conceded that he has been “overdriving the car” during the weekend so far in Barcelona, with the Italian ending Qualifying in third place.
While Antonelli continues to hold a significant lead of 66 points in the World Championship standings, it was Mercedes team mate George Russell who took the momentum on Saturday at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, surging to pole position ahead of Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton.
Antonelli had to settle for third place, marking the first time this season that he has not started from the front row.
Reflecting on his Qualifying session, the 19-year-old explained that he had not being feeling comfortable so far in Barcelona, a weekend in which he missed FP1 while reserve driver Fred Vesti took over driving duties, while traffic affected his running in FP3.
“Even though I missed FP1, I think this weekend I didn’t have enough pace [over a] single lap,” said Antonelli. “I’ve been overdriving the car and conditions are very tricky, very slippery, very hot, and the tyres have just been running away a little bit from me.
“[I’ve been] just struggling to extract the maximum out of them for the whole lap. I think not ideal, but now we’ll focus onto tomorrow.”
Looking ahead to Sunday’s race, the 19-year-old remains optimistic about what might be possible from his grid slot.
“It’s going to be important to get a good start – it’s a long run into Turn 1, so I’m not in a bad position, to be fair,” he reflected.
“Then it’s going to be important to really make the best out of the tyres, manage them well because it’s very hot and probably we’ll see a lot of stops as well tomorrow because it’s going to be hard to manage them.
“I think race pace was good in FP2, so hopefully tomorrow we’ll have an even better race pace and we can progress.”
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