-
Laurence Edmondson, F1 Editor
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff described Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s pace before his first practice accident at the Italian Grand Prix as “astonishing.”
The 18-year-old made his grand prix weekend debut during first practice, but it lasted for just five laps after he lost control of his car at Parabolica and crashed.
The Formula 2 driver, who is expected to be announced as Mercedes’ replacement for Lewis Hamilton when the seven-time champion moves to Ferrari next year, was driving George Russell’s car when he hit the barriers, with the force of the impact recorded at 52Gs.
Wolff said the incident will have “zero effect” on Antonelli’s future with Mercedes and instead highlighted the performance he showed in the one and a half flying laps before the crash.
“Most importantly he is okay because the crash was 52G. So that’s important,” Wolff said.
“It’s unfortunate because we had an hour’s running and would have seen some good performances. But that’s what we all said is he’s a rookie, he’s very young.
“We’re investing in his future and these moments, they will happen. They will continue to happen next year.
“There were a lot of highlights. We’d rather have a problem in slowing him down than making him faster. What we saw from one and a half laps was astonishing.”
In a video message sent to media after Antonelli had qualified sixth for this weekend’s F2 feature race, the Italian apologized to Mercedes and revealed he felt unwell after the impact.
“First FP1 done, but unfortunately it ended quite quickly because of the crash,” Antonelli said. “It was quite a big one, around 52Gs.
“Really sorry for the team and George for making them work afterwards. Just a mistake on my side, pushing a bit too much for the conditions. I should have built the run up more progressively, but definitely lesson learned for next time.
“But yeah, still really thankful to the team for making this possible and still great to see all the tifosi out there and to get the first laps with all the drivers on track.
“Not feeling super well at the moment. Just going to go back and try to rest and try to focus for the rest of the weekend because there’s still some races to go and we’re still going to try and get a good result.”
Wolff added: “He apologized [for the crash]. That’s what you need to do when you are bringing back a car that looks a little bit like a Lego box falling on the floor.
“But he also said he had confidence and the car was good. He was just bitten.
“Everyone was suffering with lots of temperature, especially rear temperature out of Ascari doing these kinds of speeds. And this is why the rear stepped out.”
As a Mercedes junior driver, Antonelli has been fast tracked through the lower formulas, including skipping the usual step of Formula 3 by going straight from Formula Regional to Formula 2 this year.
Asked if his unusually fast progression and likely switch to F1 next year was heaping too much pressure on the 18-year-old, Wolff said: “In our industry we perfectly understand who is capable and not.
“And I think how it’s all panned out here, he’s jumped F3, he’s pretty much won everything beforehand then it’s clear you start to become a Mercedes driver, you test in FP1, and at the same time you’re under the magnifying glass because it all happens in Monza.
“It has been a while that an Italian driver was in a top team. So I’m sure that this can be a lot for an 18-year-old.
“But as I said before, you know, he needs to swim. And these days that are so difficult, like it is for him at the moment, it feels certainly terrible. That’s part of the development curve.
“I don’t want to be the one who picks out great moments and say, well, did you see that sector? Did you see that lap time? Or we could have been third or first or whatever.
“What we see is, and that’s why I chose the word differently, what we see is there’s performance. And we’ve even seen that in the few laps that we’ve seen, but what he tried to do, the car can’t take.”