Andrea Kimi Antonelli accepts Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff’s description of his performance in the last race as “underwhelming”.
The rookie qualified sixth for his home race at Monza, just four hundredths of a second behind team mate George Russell. However he fell to ninth at the finish after losing several places at the start and collecting a penalty for an incident with Alexander Albon.
Despite agreeing with Wolff’s criticism of his race, Antonelli said there were some positives to take away from the weekend.
“I understand his comment,” he said. “Me and Toto are always very open with each other and we talk to each other quite openly. I think it was mainly about the race. Qualifying was actually pretty good, despite the off in [second practice].
“But then in the race, especially on the hard tyre I struggled a little bit and also I did a mistake at the start. So I think it was mainly related to the race, which I agree [with] on the comment, it wasn’t the best.”
Antonelli said he took Wolff’s comment “as fuel to do even better for this race weekend.” He intends to avoid a repeat of the errors he made in practice sessions at Monza and a week earlier in Zandvoort.
“First of all, [I’m] just trying to have clean sessions. In Monza I went off in FP2 super-early on and I ended up not doing long runs and I went completely blind into the race.
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“I didn’t get to feel the car in high-fuel at all so it was a bit difficult because I had to learn in the moment and on the hard I just struggled to find my rhythm so that was not ideal.
“Of course the speed in qualifying was much better in Monza so hopefully we can carry this into this weekend as well. But the main goal is just to have clean sessions and get as many laps as possible in the bag and then deliver the job in quali and then race.”
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