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Mercedes’ highly-rated rookie Kimi Antonelli on Thursday acknowledged team boss Toto Wolff’s criticism of his ‘underwhelming’ outing at the Italian Grand Prix and said he understood.
The 19-year-old Italian vowed he would work to improve on his performance at Monza where he was classified ninth after collecting a five-second penalty following a race in which he struggled with his hard tyres.
“Underwhelming this weekend. Underwhelming,” Wolff told reporters in Italy. “You can’t put the car in the gravel bed and expect to be there… All of the race was underwhelming.”
Antonelli responded saying he regarded the criticism as motivation to deliver a much stronger and more disciplined showing at this weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix after a run of poor results. He added that he felt it was imperative for him to “first of all, just try to have clean sessions…In Monza, I went off in the FP2 super-early on and ended up not doing any long runs.
“So, I went completely blind into the race. I didn’t get to feel the car on high fuel at all, so it was a bit difficult as I had to learn in the moment. I struggled to find my rhythm so that wasn’t ideal.
“My main goal is to have clean sessions and get as many laps as possible in the bag and deliver the job in qualifying and in the race.”
