Villeneuve blasts Antonelli after Zandvoort clash: “Maybe F1 is too much”
Kimi Antonelli’s summer reboot lasted all of 30 laps. The Mercedes rookie left Zandvoort with a pair of penalties, a wrecked W15 and a stinging review from Jacques Villeneuve, who didn’t so much critique the teenager as torch his decision-making on live TV.
The flashpoint came while fighting for fifth. Antonelli fired the Mercedes down the inside of Turn 3, understeered across the camber and speared Charles Leclerc into the wall. The stewards handed Antonelli a 10-second time penalty for the collision; he then picked up another five seconds for speeding in the pit lane. Both he and Leclerc retired.
Villeneuve, on Sky F1 duty, called it a junior formula move, heavy on hope and light on calculation. In his words, it was the sort of lunge “you might see in Formula 4 or Formula 3” from a driver who hasn’t learned where the line is. The 1997 World Champion went further, questioning whether the Mercedes prodigy is ready at all. “Maybe F1 is just too much for him,” he said, arguing that age isn’t a shield when you’re on the grid. Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton were young, too — the point being, in Villeneuve’s view, that they were immediately on the pace and didn’t need to invent overtakes from two car lengths back.
The line drew a quick counter from Naomi Schiff. On the same broadcast, she noted that even Verstappen clattered into his share of hard lessons early on — overreaching is part of what marks out a racer. Antonelli’s raw aggression isn’t the problem, she suggested; harnessing it is. The potential is visible, even if the judgement isn’t yet consistent.
Villeneuve wasn’t shifting. For him, the Zandvoort dive was doomed before Antonelli even hit the brakes. That grippy, high-banked Turn 3 inside line so many rookies fancy? It bites unless you’re already alongside. It was never on.
Strip away the noise and Antonelli’s year has been exactly what Mercedes expected when they fast-tracked him. This is a driver who was racing in Formula 4 as recently as 2022, skipped F3, did a single F2 campaign, and then stepped straight into the seat vacated by Lewis Hamilton for 2025. The ceiling is obvious — the racecraft, less so on days like this.
Toto Wolff didn’t flinch. The Mercedes boss reminded everyone that this was the deal from the start: a season of learning, with some “tear your hair out” weekends and flashes of the real thing in between. Zandvoort delivered both. Antonelli’s FP1 off put him on the back foot; his race pace in clean air was strong; the move on Leclerc ended it in the barriers. Mercedes, Wolff said, still wants him to go for moves — the refinement will come. And with the constructors’ title out of reach this season, the team’s priority is 2026 readiness, not polishing the points column in August.
That won’t soothe Ferrari, who saw a podium-tilting afternoon end nose-first in the wall. Nor will it slow the chorus around Antonelli, who’s living the harshest version of Mercedes’ succession plan: growing up at 300 km/h, with every slip blared back through a loudhailer. The kid’s not short on speed. That was clear again once he was free of the midfield tangle. But threading that speed through wheel-to-wheel judgement is the part you can’t simulate — it only arrives through repetition and, occasionally, a bruising Monday debrief.
Villeneuve’s point about standards isn’t wrong; neither is Wolff’s about timeline. The truth, as ever in F1, lives between the kerbs. Antonelli tried one from too far back and paid full price. The real measure will be what he does with it next weekend: does he recalibrate without shrinking, or let the edges round off? Mercedes will be praying for the former. So, quietly, will the sport.
For driver and team details from the 2025 season, see the 2025 Formula One World Championship entry on Wikipedia.
