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Antonelli steps up his level in dramatic fashion
Antonelli steps up his level in dramatic fashion
Kimi Antonelli's impressive victory in the Miami Grand Prix, his third win in a row, was "something special", says 1996 world champion Damon Hill.
"We witnessed this young boy showing us what enormous potential he clearly has, and I'm almost stunned with how he has coped this season," Hill told BBC Radio 5 Live.
On top of that, Hill added, 19-year-old Antonelli is "showing up" his team-mate George Russell, who started the season as favourite, but finds himself staring at a 20-point deficit in the championship after four races.
Antonelli's win also marked another statistical milestone for the Italian.
Already the youngest pole winner and the youngest driver to lead championship, he is now only the third driver in history to take his first three pole positions in a row. In that, he is in exalted company - Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher are the others.
And he joins Hill and Mika Hakkinen as the first driver to win his first three races consecutively.
All four of those drivers are world champions. Two of them are in the debate for the greatest driver who has ever lived. It's a stretch, to say the least, to argue Antonelli is heading into that discussion just yet, but he has made quite the impression already this year.
This is only Antonelli's second season in Formula 1. His first showed occasional promise, but nothing that suggested this was going to come next.
Yes, Mercedes have the best car, and yes the fates turned against Russell in various ways in both the Chinese and Japanese Grands Prix, which he could easily have won.
But that should take nothing away from Antonelli, who has stepped up his level this season in dramatic fashion.
Antonelli owes his place in F1 to Toto Wolff, the Mercedes team principal, who picked him up as an 11-year-old, wowed by his potential in karting, and has mentored him ever since.
It was Wolff who took the risk of throwing Antonelli in at the deep end after just two years of racing as a replacement for Lewis Hamilton. And Wolff who took the criticism from some quarters that he was asking too much too soon.
Wolff said: "When you look throughout his trajectory, in karting and in the junior formulas, he was just outstanding. And when you think about what we said last year, it's exactly how he's performed and how he's developed now.
"We had great ups and moments of brilliance and then moments where he was allowed to make mistakes.
"We needed to calibrate and continue to mentor him while having pressure on him. But he just takes it so well and he's able to analyse it but not overthink it. He compartmentalises it. 'OK, I made a mistake. I put it away.'
"And then, boom, this year the start the season, he's seen the grands prix (before), he's worked with the team, he knows the pressure that the media puts upon him.
"It's easier to calm someone down that is wild. Because you won't be able to accelerate a donkey. So, for me, that was his best race so far. And it reminds me of the karting days or Formula 4.
But nevertheless, we just really need to stay calm here because such a success for such a young man at that stage, all of Italy will be on him.
For Russell, this cannot be an easy moment in his career. A Mercedes protege himself, he has waited eight years for this moment - the best car, with Mercedes.
Last year, he was comfortably the better driver of the two; only rarely did Antonelli get the better of him. So he earned his status as pre-season championship favourite.
The Briton, 28, lived up to that when he won the first race of the season in Australia from pole position, but since then things have gone against him.
A technical problem almost certainly robbed him of pole in China and handed it to Antonelli, who converted it into a maiden win. A safety car intervened to hand the victory in Japan to Antonelli, when without it most likely either McLaren's Oscar Piastri or Russell would have won.
But there was no doubt about the Miami win. Antonelli put it on pole. Russell was fifth on the grid, behind upgraded cars from the Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari teams.
Antonelli made a sixth bad start in a row and lost ground. But he stayed calm, fought back, and grabbed the win from McLaren's Lando Norris over the pit stop period.
Norris initially thought that was all about McLaren making a mistake by letting Mercedes pit first, not wanting to go too early with rain threatening.
But McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said the team still had the margin to stay ahead of Antonelli when they did stop three laps after him, but that a series of events conspired against them.
First, there was the time gained by what Stella called a "huge" first lap out of the pits by Antonelli after his stop. That risked overheating his tyres, which he would have to deal with later, but ensured he was still within striking range of the McLaren.
Then Norris made a couple of errors on his in-lap and had a slow stop. Combine all that, and it was enough to put Antonelli right on Norris' tail when the McLaren came out of the pits. The Mercedes quickly swept past, and Antonelli held Norris off for the rest of the race.
Russell is keeping things in perspective, recognising there are still 18 races to go, and a lot can happen.
"Clearly he's in a very good place at the moment and momentum is with him," Russell said. "But, having got enough experience myself in championships I've won and how momentum swings throughout the year, and looking at the championship last year, to be honest, I'm not even considering it.
"It's just that I want to get back on to the top step of the podium. The first three races, I had the performance to do that, but this weekend I absolutely did not have the performance to do that.
So, I could be standing here now with three very different results in previous races, with this one being a bit of a one-off, but obviously things worked out differently in Japan and China, but that's Formula 1 sometimes.
Russell admitted that the "pace was really, really poor on my side", and that he has never gelled with the Miami circuit and its low-grip surface and slow corners.
But Hill said: "You can't have that, you can't have a track that you don't gel with. You've got to be good across everything. George now has to regroup, has to look at where he is at and what the new paradigm is."
While Wolff was speaking to the media after the race, he made a mention of the role Antonelli's father Marco, who was standing among them listening, had to play in keeping his son's feet on the ground.
The risk is that he's being carried away too quickly," Wolff said. "And we know that the parents are going to keep him grounded. Right, Marco?
Antonelli Sr responded: "Right."
Wolff continued: "The easier bit is making sure that he keeps both feet on the ground here in the team. His parents have played a big part in that, to leave him grounded.
"The bigger problem is the Italian public. You know, now that they are not qualified for football (in the World Cup), it's all about (tennis number one Jannik) Sinner and Antonelli.
"Sinner won in Madrid. So it's the two that are superstars. There's so much request, so much time from the media, from sponsors. And it's on us to keep the handbrake on that.
"He has a killer of a team-mate that is extremely fast. The others are catching up in performance. And we want to play the long game.
He can hopefully win many championships over 10 years, 15 years, and we don't want to stumble now with these huge expectations that will sit on him. Because the moment he has a bad race, which will happen, where he makes a mistake, people will say, 'Oh, maybe he is not the one superstar that we thought.'
Hill said: "He's now charged up. It was a worry when he had good early results because I thought it was going to be a rush of blood to the head, now he thinks he's going to be world champion.
But looking at today's performance, this weekend, you have to say he has got every right to believe that.
Source: BBC
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