Andrea Kimi Antonelli was inadvertently the trigger for the late race drama in the Spanish GP, as the sudden breakdown of his Mercedes engine brought out the safety car. For the young Italian himself the issues meant an abrupt end to a lonely race.
“It was all of the sudden,” Antonelli explained his engine issues. “I didn’t feel it coming together.
“It was pretty lonely in the race, because I was quite upset with the strategy. And on the medium I felt quite decent, to be honest, especially at the end I was having a consistent pace.
“It was a shame to finish off like this. It was a really difficult triple header on my side, and now we’ll try to come back stronger for the next one.”
The Mercedes driver highlighted the issues the W16 has with warmer temperatures, which cause the car to be harder on the tyres than expected.
“Yeah, it was very tricky out there with the hot temperatures, much hotter than FP2, for example, when we did the long run. So it was not easy out there, but still it was a very good learning.”
Antonelli looking to bounce back in Canada
The Spanish GP was the final race in what proved a difficult triple header for Kimi Antonelli. After seeing some good results in Miami, this triple header saw two DNF’s and a last place in Monaco. Far from ideal, but Kimi Antonelli feels that having a reset will give him the opportunity to bounce back in Canada.
“Now, obviously, I have time to reset, to reset the mind and everything, and I’ll try to gather all the learning, all the information in order to be back stronger for Canada.
“I think Canada is going to be completely different track, completely different tarmac, closed tarmac, and back with the C6.
“So it’s going to be important to understand more the behaviour of it, and on my side I’ll try to, now the goal is to try to put everything together, because I think the potential is there.”
Looking back on qualifying, the 18 year old feels his form is coming back.
“Also yesterday qualifying, on that last lap, the potential to finish further up was there. It’s just, you know, also because I had only one set, but I didn’t really put everything together.
“But it was still nice to kind of get back into the rhythm, especially after two difficult weekends with the qualifying, so now the confidence is getting back.”
C6 tyre a tricky beast
The C6 tyre, introduced this year, proves to be a bit of a pickle for the teams. Too soft for the fast turns of the Imola circuit, but also quite tricky to fully utilise in the slow Monaco streets. So trying to figure out how to extract the most performance from it is going to be the main thing going into the Canadian GP.
“Understanding the tyre, especially when it comes to qualifying, with the changeable condition, understanding how to extract always the maximum out of it [will be the key focus].
“Because what I felt for me in Monaco, it’s a very picky tyre, where the window is super small, and if you’re already in the warm-up, if you’re out of the window then you don’t get the grip out of the tyre.
“So it’s really important to understand how to always put the tyre in the window for when I start the lap.”
In addition, Mercedes brought some updates to the Spanish GP, which pleased Kimi Antonelli.
“They felt, you know, the car felt pretty good, connected,” he explained. “So I think we did feel something, and now we’ll see also with the rear suspension, because we’ve done some good learnings, and hopefully now we can get a benefit from it.”
