Antonelli admits ‘wake‑up call’ and a driving reset as Mercedes rookie finds his feet
Kimi Antonelli didn’t need a debrief to tell him the middle chunk of his rookie season had gone off-script. He felt it from the cockpit. The Mercedes youngster, who burst out of the blocks in 2025, has been painfully honest about overthinking, overdriving and, ultimately, underdelivering across the summer. Then came Monza, a blunt meeting, and a mindset shift he says is now powering a small but meaningful upswing.
“I had a big meeting with the team, a strong one, and it was a good wake-up call,” Antonelli said after banking fifth in Singapore, his third straight weekend in solid points. “I was focusing too much on the final result, and I wasn’t focusing on the process.”
The data tells the story he’s alluding to. Antonelli racked up 48 points from the opening six rounds before a dry spell of just 16 across the next nine. In recent weeks, the tide’s turned: ninth at Monza in front of a very loud home crowd, a fourth in Baku just two seconds shy of the podium, and fifth under the lights at Marina Bay. The headline was George Russell’s composed pole-to-win drive in Singapore, but Antonelli’s quieter haul mattered just as much inside the garage. It confirmed there’s a direction of travel.
The Italian has been unusually forthright about what’s been holding him back. It isn’t just experience or pressure, he says. It’s the way this generation of cars needs to be hustled—or rather, not hustled.
“My driving style is quite aggressive. I tend to throw the car into the corner,” he explained. “With this generation, you can’t really do that. Maybe it’s the aerodynamics, the tyres, the wind sensitivity… the limit is so high, and once you pass it, it flips. The car becomes super unpredictable.”
That single sentence—once you pass it, it flips—will resonate with anyone who’s watched these ground-effect cars bite back. The W16 has pace (Russell’s Singapore weekend was proof), but it lives in a narrow operating window. Antonelli’s task is threading that needle without neutering what makes him quick.
“I’m still trying to change a little bit the way I drive,” he said. “Not completely, because in some corners the car can take it, but in other corners it cannot. It’s about understanding where you can ask for more and where you can’t.”
Singapore underlined that balance in stark terms. Antonelli looked in rhythm across Q1 and Q2—just a tenth off Russell at that stage—then overreached in Q3 when the front row felt possible.
“My emotions took over,” he admitted. “I didn’t drive very well. Too many mistakes. I started to drive tensely because I wasn’t doing clean laps. It was a very good learning for the future… sometimes just doing a little bit less brings you more.”
If that sounds like a sports psychologist’s mantra, that’s partly the point. Antonelli talks now about process over outcome, about clean execution, about being “a bit more relaxed in the car.” After Monza, he says, there was a reset: less scoreboard watching, more attention to inputs and repeatable laps. The result was Baku—arguably his most complete F1 weekend to date.
“Baku was definitely what I needed,” he said. “It switched the momentum. I really wanted a podium and I was so close the whole race… after a couple of days, I looked back and it was very positive. In terms of approach and preparation, it was a good standard.”
In Singapore, Russell’s experience told and the senior Mercedes driver delivered the kind of clean, patient weekend team bosses crave. That’s the reference point for Antonelli—fast, yes, but elastic enough to bend with the car’s whims and the circuit’s demands. Right now, he knows he’s not quite there, and he’s refreshingly open about it.
“I still feel I cannot drive the car the way I want,” he said. “When I have confidence, I start to throw the car into the corners and then the problem reappears. So it’s still not fully natural, but I’m doing the steps in the right way.”
As for the bigger picture, there’s no public drama about 2026 in Brackley. Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has made clear he intends to stick with his current line-up, and nothing in Antonelli’s tone suggests he’s looking over his shoulder. The rookie’s gaze is squarely on the next session, the next corner, the next moment he chooses not to overstep.
If he keeps marrying that streak of honesty with the raw speed that put him on the F1 grid in the first place, the remainder of the year could look a lot more like the beginning—and a lot less like the middle.
