Rosberg to Mercedes: Sign Antonelli now — and turn down the volume
Nico Rosberg has seen enough. In his view, the best way to steady Kimi Antonelli’s rookie season isn’t with public blasts from the pit wall — it’s with ink on paper.
After a bruising few weeks for the 19-year-old Italian, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff shifted tone at Monza, calling Antonelli’s weekend “underwhelming” following an FP2 off, P7 in qualifying and a low-key run to ninth, 27 seconds behind George Russell in fifth. It was the first real crackle of public criticism from the team since Antonelli’s early-season spark gave way to retirements and penalties, including a clumsy clash with Charles Leclerc and a pit-lane speeding rap at Zandvoort.
Wolff did add that his long-term belief in Antonelli is unchanged and suggested a 2026 deal is essentially done, just not one that warrants a fanfare — “no big announcement,” as he put it, more a quiet heads-up when signatures are in place.
Rosberg, though, doesn’t love the optics or the timing. The 2016 World Champion figures Mercedes would get far more out of their prodigy by removing the doubt sooner rather than later.
“It’s surprising,” Rosberg said on Sky’s F1 Show. “Right now, the only play is to give Kimi as much time as possible, in as calm a way as possible. That means not criticising him publicly. I’d just give him the contract. Give him confidence.”
Rosberg knows how this team tends to operate — he lived the Toto Wolff machine through the most stressful years of the Hamilton–Rosberg rivalry. Which is why he suspects the public nudge was deliberate, a calculated bump to the Antonelli camp to rethink approach. Whether that’s entirely helpful is another matter.
Let’s be blunt: the head-to-head numbers are rough. Against Russell, Antonelli trails heavily in races and has only a couple of quali wins to show for it. “Kimi is a generational talent,” Rosberg insisted, “but it’s been harder than we all thought so far.” That’s the paradox: the paddock still believes in the ceiling; the scoreboard doesn’t care.
Monza was a neat microcosm. After the FP2 off, Antonelli regrouped to qualify just a few hundredths behind Russell — exactly the kind of response you want from a rookie in a pressure cooker. But the race went away from him. Mercedes were quick over one lap; over a stint, Antonelli never quite found the same rhythm. It happens. It also feeds a narrative that won’t help a 19-year-old trying to keep his shoulders loose.
Rosberg’s bigger point is the mental side. He sees shades of his own makeup in Antonelli — and a bit of Lando Norris, too. “More vulnerable, more sensitive, dwelling on the negatives,” he said. “Scared of not being good enough.” In Monza’s TV interviews, Rosberg noted, Antonelli spent more time apologising for his Friday mistake than celebrating a genuinely strong qualifying. It’s a tell. And it’s fixable.
“Someone needs to tell him: focus on the good,” Rosberg added. “Don’t repeat the negative stuff in public because it creates a wave.” He even floated the idea of writing to Antonelli with exactly that advice — a note he once tried to deliver to Norris, who’s said he works with a psychologist and has largely stepped off social media. That’s not a cure-all, but top-level sport is a game of inches, and the inches are usually upstairs.
There’s also the cold strategy of contracts. Rosberg’s argument is brutally pragmatic: lock Antonelli in, exhale, and give the kid a runway. If it genuinely goes pear-shaped over winter, Formula 1 has seen stranger pivots. But prolonging any will-they-won’t-they over his seat doesn’t feel like high performance. Not for the driver, not for the team dynamic, and not with a teammate in Russell who’s quietly hoovering up results.
And that’s the friction Mercedes are wrestling with. The car is improving. The updates are starting to land. Russell’s found a groove. Antonelli, who’s shown flashes of the raw speed that made Mercedes bet big on him in the first place, needs a foundation to build from — and one press conference after another dissecting every misstep isn’t much of one.
Wolff would argue he’s just being honest. He’s also right that a driver at this level has to absorb pressure, not resent it. Still, there’s a line between a constructive nudge and a headline that lives rent-free on every social feed the next morning. With a rookie, that line’s razor-thin.
If Mercedes believe Antonelli is their future — and everything out of Brackley suggests they do — then act like it. Get the deal across the line, remove the noise, and make the rest of 2025 about progress, not posture. Confidence isn’t a switch, but stability helps you find where it is.
The clock, as Rosberg put it, does start to tick. It doesn’t have to be an alarm.
