Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli has opened up about the five-second penalty he received, his overall performance during the race weekend, his struggles with the W16, the areas to improve upon, and the European leg of the season following his disappointing ninth-place finish at the F1 Italian GP.
Despite beaching his car in the gravel during the second hour of practice, Antonelli recovered well on Saturday to qualify P7 behind his Mercedes teammate, George Russell.
The Italian rookie bolted on the medium compound tyres and lined up sixth for his home race following Lewis Hamilton’s five-place grid penalty. Unfortunately, he lost ground at the start due to excessive wheelspin and dropped down to P10.
Although he managed to gain a couple of positions, Antonelli received a black-and-white flag for persistent track limits offences. He then picked up a five-second penalty for driving erratically and forcing Alex Albon onto the grass. This dropped the Mercedes driver to P9 at the chequered flag.
Still, Antonelli managed to score on his home soil and secure his best finish since his maiden F1 podium in Canada back in June. However, he now finds himself eighth in the championship standings.
Poor start compromised Antonelli’s race more than penalty
Speaking in the print media pen after the F1 race, Kimi Antonelli reflected on his clash with Albon for seventh place and the subsequent penalty he received in the closing stages of the Italian GP on Sunday.
Stating that he needed to re-examine his battle with the Williams driver, the 19-year-old reckoned that his manoeuvre wasn’t too extreme. Even though he lamented the loss of a position, Antonelli also acknowledged that the wheelspin he had suffered off the line had compromised his race from the get-go.
“I need to re-look, but it didn’t look too bad to me. Apparently, I pushed him [Albon] off track. I don’t know, to be honest. I need to re-look at it.
“It’s a shame, but I think the race was compromised with the start. I got wheelspin straight away and just lost a lot of places.”
Glad that the European leg has come to an end
In terms of whether he was satisfied with his performance on his home turf, Kimi Antonelli responded that he was content with his strong one-lap pace on Saturday. At the same time, he admitted that he needs to work on the execution of his race starts before heading to Azerbaijan for the next Grand Prix.
“Well, I’m happy about the quali pace, which was strong.
“It’s just a shame with the start that I made a mistake and lost a lot of places. I just need to work on that and try to do better in Baku.”
Asked how his management of the F1 Italian GP was in comparison to Imola, Antonelli revealed that he felt more confident in the handling of different aspects of the race weekend at Monza.
While he emphasised that his race on Sunday was quite challenging, the rookie made it abundantly clear that he was looking forward to the end of the European leg of the season. He added that he hopes to reproduce the results he had delivered earlier in the year as they gear up for the flyaway races in the final half of the 2025 F1 campaign.
“It was much better. I felt much more at ease with everything and managing everything.
“It was still not an easy race, but now the European part of the season is finished. Now we go again out of Europe. Hopefully, we can get the nice rhythm again and get some good points.
“Definitely, the European season has been very difficult and not ideal. So, hopefully, now we can have a good trend like at the start of the season. I’m really looking forward to that. I’m honestly really happy that this European season is finished.”
Antonelli identifies areas of improvement
With regard to whether there were any positives to take away from the race weekend, the 19-year-old once again highlighted his mixed fortunes in Italy.
Noting the marginal gap of 0.043s in qualifying to his experienced teammate, Kimi Antonelli maintained that his FP2 mishap cost him valuable time to evaluate long runs and adversely impacted his pace in Sunday’s Italian GP. Furthermore, he stated that he would concentrate his efforts on pulling off uneventful practice sessions going forward to nail his preparation for qualifying and the races.
“Obviously, I’m disappointed today, but yesterday was positive. Hopefully, we can keep the same momentum in qualifying and try to use race pace in the race.
“As I said, the quali pace was better, which was good. I was much closer to George [Russell]. But in the race, I didn’t do long runs in FP2 because of my mistakes. I wasn’t really prepared for the race. That also didn’t help.
“Looking to the next few races, it’s going to be important to have a clean weekend from FP1 all the way to FP in order to be ready for qualifying and then races.”
Consequences of missing FP2
When asked how disappointed he was to spin his W16 at the entry of the second Lesmo corner and beach himself in the gravel after only 10 minutes of running in FP2, the Mercedes rookie rued his failure to capitalise on the most representative practice session of the weekend.
Elaborating on how his long runs on the soft tyres in the third practice session for the Italian GP weren’t consequential to their tyre strategy on Sunday, Kimi Antonelli reiterated that his lack of adequate preparation significantly undermined his performance in the fastest-ever race in F1 history.
“You know, when you miss a full practice, especially in FP2, which is usually quite important. Because the track is the closest in terms of time and temperature to qualifying. But also for long runs.
“Because in FP1, you do long runs, but the track is usually quite green. So, the deg is a bit different, while FP2 is more representative. I didn’t do the long run in the most important session.
“I did a long run in FP3, but it was with a soft tyre, which was quite irrelevant. That was penalising, mostly for the race today.”
Challenges the W16 posed at Monza
In terms of what the biggest shortcoming of the W16 was during the Italian GP weekend, Kimi Antonelli remarked that he felt at ease on the yellow-walled tyres. However, he also revealed that he was struggling with rear instability on the hard compound tyres.
“On medium, I felt pretty good, to be honest, with the car.
“On hard, I struggled with the rear. I had instability in medium-high speed corners. I struggled overall a little bit with the rear support.”
