Antonelli understands Wolff's criticism
BAKU :Italian teenager Kimi Antonelli said he understood why Mercedes Formula One team boss Toto Wolff criticised his last race as 'underwhelming' and had taken it positively.
The 19-year-old, ninth in front of his home fans at Monza on September 7 after starting sixth, told reporters ahead of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix that he hoped for a much better performance this weekend.
"I pretty much understand his comment. You know, me and Toto are always very open with each other, and we talk to each other quite openly," he said.
"I think it was mainly about the race. Qualifying was actually pretty good, despite the off in FP2 (second practice). But then in the race, especially on the hard tyre, I struggled a little bit. Also, I made a mistake at the start.
"So I think it was mainly related to the race, which I agree wasn’t the best. But I took it positively - as fuel to do even better for this race weekend."
Antonelli has scored only 66 of his team's 260 points from 16 races this season, and has a best finish of third in Canada - a race won by teammate George Russell.
The Italian has suffered four retirements and failed to score on four other occasions in what is recognised as a learning year.
"I was struggling to find my rhythm and I was trying different things, but I ended up making a few mistakes," he said on Monza.
"For sure, he (Wolff) doesn’t want that to happen again, because in the race I lost a lot of time. The conversation was pretty clear: he just wants me to have a clean weekend to regain the momentum I had."
Antonelli hoped to carry over some of the qualifying speed from Monza, even if Mercedes were focusing most of their efforts on next year while some others still had upgrades.
"That makes us have to be even more precise and perfect in some ways. As a driver you just need to maximise everything, because the gap is so close now that every mistake you make punishes you in a big way," he said.
"Hopefully, this weekend we’ll be fast. But this year, on tracks where we were meant to be fast, we weren’t so fast. And tracks where we struggled a bit more the previous year, we were fast this year."
