Why Antonelli is frustrated by “too many zeroes” in his first half season

The Italian teenager admits that he expected more from his first 12 race weekends

Kimi Antonelli’s rookie season was always going to be an extended learning exercise, despite the thorough training he undertook with his Mercedes TPC programme last year.

However it’s perhaps been trickier than either he or team boss Toto Wolff expected. Indeed in the last six races he scored points on only one occasion, with his breakthrough first podium in Canada.

Technical issues in Imola and Spain were out of his control, but a frustrating Monaco GP resulted from a brush with the wall in qualifying, and in Austria he experienced the low point of his season to date when he took out Max Verstappen on the first lap.

He was hoping to bounce back at Silverstone. Instead having taken a three-place grid hit for the Red Bull Ring incident a lap one stop for slicks sent him down the order, and later he was struck in the gloom by an unsighted Isack Hadjar, contact that led to a retirement with floor damage.

It was one of those weekends where nothing worked in his favour, and it was even harder to take given it came so soon after the Verstappen collision.

“First of all, I don't know what to say,” Antonelli noted when I asked him about his race. “Just seems like everything is going wrong at the moment, and hard to find some positives.

“We took a gamble in lap one, which unfortunately didn't work, because as well when I pitted, then the VSC came out, and I just couldn't build any temperature into the tyre.

“And then when we went back on inters, obviously, the visibility was extremely poor. I don't know why, but I could feel it coming, in the moment. And I was lucky to still keep it on track, because the hit was massive. And yeah, just a shame to finish with another zero.”

There was not much he could have done: “No one to blame. When they told me it was going to restart, I was a bit unsure about that, because the visibility was still very poor at lower speed. So at higher speed would have been even worse.

“I think also Isack was just a passenger. Obviously, I braked a bit earlier, but just because it was so hard to see where the corner was, and Isack couldn't see me.

“I think I lost 100 points of downforce just because the whole diffuser was gone, and just extremely difficult to keep the car on track.”

It was certainly not the way that he wanted to follow the Austrian GP disappointment and head into the mini-break before Spa.

The bottom line is that with 12 weekends and thus half of his rookie season out of the way the Italian has 63 points – a decent total, but not where he wants or indeed needs to be compared to the 147 of team mate George Russell.

“I think I'm not super happy to be honest, too many zeroes scored,” he admitted at Silverstone.

“After Canada I've been struggling to find some positives, to be honest. It feels like nothing is really working on our way, and I just need to focus and reset and try to find again the light at the end of the tunnel. Because definitely, I'm not going through a nice mode.”

There have been positive signs, such as the Miami sprint pole and that solid run to third in Canada on a day when Russell proved that the W17 was capable of winning races in the right circumstances.

However, one could argue that Mercedes expected to see a few more flashes of the special quality that the likes of Michael Schumacher, Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen were able to demonstrate in their early races – something that indicates that he will one day be ranked alongside those greats.

It’s not easy to jump into a high profile team after missing F3 and a single year in F2, even with decent TPC and sim preparation, but that’s the choice Wolff made. There’s been much to learn about tyre behaviour, and while the W17 is less of a diva than its predecessors, it has its quirks when it comes to hot weather and tracks that put energy into its Pirellis.

Antonelli has also admitted to being too cautious as he finds his feet early in race weekends, a legacy of the impact of last year’s Monza FP1 crash.

As a result when it comes to qualifying he’s found the step from FP3 to Q1 and the progression to Q3 to be quite challenging. Latterly he’s tried to address that.

He concedes that it’s been something of a rollercoaster season thus far.

“It went by so quick, and I think I've had quite big highs and some lows as well. I think on my side, I did a bit too many mistakes. And I think my approach in especially starting this season, was not the best.

“But overall, I think nowadays in F1 it's super tight, you look at qualifying the gaps are super close, and that explains and really tells you how much you have to be on it.

“You have to be on top of the game and looking for every detail, because as soon as you start a bit off, you're immediately in the back foot, and then to recover is quite difficult. And I think we had some really good moments, and as I said before, some bad ones.

“But I think I'm understanding a lot more as well, and I'm more in control of the situation as well. And I think this will help as well for the second half of the season. Definitely, I'm not super happy, but at the same time, I'm not disappointed with this first half.”

Austria was clearly the low point, Antonelli misjudging his braking in the dash to Turn 3 in the middle of the pack. However he’d had some training in how to get over such disappointments.

“I think Monza was worse,” he said. “For me Monza was like the worst ever. But definitely I think after you go through difficult moments is also, they all help, in case you face them again, to overcome them in a better way.

“And I think the difficult triple header was a really good learning, and it really helped me as well, to face the down moment of Austria and to kind of reset and come back stronger.

“But definitely these are all episodes that obviously you don't want to happen, because in some ways they kind of hurt you as well. But they also make you make it stronger and when, you get to the moment again, the difficult moment, you're able to react in a much better way.”

All of this is playing out in the context of Wolff’s pursuit of Max Verstappen. The accepted wisdom is that if the Dutchman is signed he will replace Russell, despite the Englishman’s strong form and long-term ties to the team.

After all it’s hard to imagine Mercedes dropping or benching Antonelli given the investment that has been made him, and the fact that he’s supposed to represent the future.

However the driver market is fluid, to say the least, and some unexpected twists could yet happen.

One option for Wolff could be to place Antonelli at new Mercedes customer Alpine for a couple of years, but given the Enstone team already has three rookies of its own in Franco Colapinto, Jack Doohan and Paul Aron even by the standards of Flavio Briatore that would be an unusual bit of business. Meanwhile all Antonelli can do is state his case on track.

“Obviously there's a lot going on, but I'm sure that the team is doing their best to provide the best for the future as well,” he noted at Silverstone.

“Because obviously they're not looking only for next year, but they're looking as well for the future. So obviously, there's a lot going on, a lot of talks. But my goal is just to try and do my best, no matter what.

“I'm very happy where I am, and I'm also quite sure with the team, and also what they want from me. So I think now my in my case, I need to just do my best, minimise all the mistakes and then try to deliver the best as possible. I know the team has a lot trust in me, and so yeah, I'm not really worried.”