Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin has shared his insights into Kimi Antonelli’s recent struggles, George Russell’s comparative upper hand, and future objectives for the W16 following their underwhelming performance at the rain-delayed F1 Belgian GP.
After a disappointing SQ1 exit and a point-less finish in the Sprint race, Antonelli found himself eliminated in the first segment of Grand Prix qualifying. Starting from the pit lane in Sunday’s race, the young rookie failed to make any significant headway and crossed the line in sixteenth place. Apart from his maiden podium finish in Canada, he has yet to score a point in the European leg of the season.
Meanwhile, Russell had a somewhat respectable weekend at Spa-Francorchamps. Although he finished P12 in the Sprint, the four-time race winner set the sixth-fastest time in Saturday’s qualifying. Having passed Alex Albon early on, he cruised to P5 in a rather lonely race on Sunday.
Lack of experience and car changes prompting Antonelli’s recent struggles
Speaking in a print media session after the F1 race, Andrew Shovlin shared his thoughts on Kimi Antonelli’s recent lack of confidence in the W16 as the Italian finished outside the top ten yet again, this time in the wet-dry Belgian GP on Sunday.
Touching on their continuing struggles over a single lap, the Brit elaborated on how George Russell has been able to fall back on his considerable experience in F1 and extract the most from the tricky Mercedes in the process. In contrast, he surmised that Antonelli’s current streak of disappointing results probably stems from his inexperience in the sport.
“I think what you’ve seen in the recent qualifyings is that George [Russell] is leaning on his many years of experience in an F1 car to try and make the most of a difficult car when it comes to quali.
“Kimi [Antonelli] hasn’t got that to drop back on and that’s probably why you’ve seen a bit of a shift in his results recently.”
With regard to the root of the problem and whether the Brackley-based outfit can rekindle the 18-year-old’s confidence in the upcoming races, Shovlin stated that they need to evaluate some of the recent modifications to the car and revert to a more agreeable baseline.
“But, again, it goes back to the fact we’ve got to solve that problem because there’s still a long way to go this year.
“It is quite likely something that we’ve changed on the car and we just need to recover a bit of, you know, just get back to a baseline where it’s working more normally.”
How Russell extracts more from the tricky W16
Asked how the team and Kimi Antonelli intend to bounce back mentally after a difficult Belgian GP weekend, Andrew Shovlin revealed that the Italian F1 driver has been receiving a lot of technical feedback from Peter Bonnington and other engineers in his garage. He also added that they are concentrating their efforts on working out the overall shortcomings of the car.
Furthermore, Shovlin reiterated that George Russell can lean on his previous exposure to challenging F1 cars and rely on experimenting and instinct to extract more lap time from the W16.
“Well, I mean, Kimi, you know, he’s had a few tough weekends but he’s getting a lot of engineering support from Bono [Peter Bonnington] and the engineers on that side of the garage.
“We as a team are well aware that the thing that we need to focus on is the weaknesses in the car, not the bits that Kimi’s struggling with.
“The fact is that George is leaning on all his experience, quite a bit of it driving difficult cars, to get the qualifying laps out of it.
“We’re finding quite a lot of time during the session. It’s just because George is learning to know when he can trust the car and can lean on it, but he’s not getting that feeling from it inherently. He’s just having to work out where it will actually stick and where it won’t.”
Better drivability will help both Mercedes drivers, particularly Antonelli
In terms of whether the car has become trickier to drive and whether that partially explains why Kimi Antonelli has been struggling more in the past few race weekends in comparison to George Russell, Andrew Shovlin concurred with both assessments after a lowly 10-point haul from the F1 Belgian GP on Sunday.
Highlighting the sharp learning curve Antonelli finds himself on, the 51-year-old maintained that the rookie needs time to further develop as a driver. Moreover, he remarked that the dip in performance Russell has experienced since Montreal corroborates the W16’s current lack of competitiveness as well.
“Yeah, because, you know, Kimi’s on a steep learning curve and he’s going to be getting better as a driver.
“The fact that his early performances were better than they are now is almost certainly that the car’s not as competitive and you can see that mirrored in George’s results.”
Shovlin also acknowledged that it’s considerably difficult for a rookie, regardless of their calibre, to produce consistent drives in an inconsistent car. Nonetheless, he added that Antonelli’s performances so far have demonstrated his inherent talent and that further development of the car will be beneficial for both drivers, especially the inexperienced one.
“You know, I think we’ve seen it lots of times before as well. When a young driver comes in and they’re in a very good car, they can often really impress. When a young driver comes in and they’re in a difficult car, it’s very hard to get it together week in, week out.
“And we’ve seen enough from Kimi to know that there’s a great deal of talent there.
“But what will help George will also help Kimi and it will probably help Kimi more.”
