Kimi Antonelli behaviour prompts calls for Mercedes intervention

Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli has had a hard time of it lately during his rookie season in F1.

The 19-year-old was announced as the latest addition to Toto Wolff's outfit at the 2024 Italian GP, despite crashing George Russell's W16 during his debut FP1 outing in front of his home crowd.

One year on, and despite getting off to a promising start at the Silver Arrows, Antonelli appears to be troubled by his string of mistakes on-track.

For two weekends running, the Italian youngster beached his Mercedes into the gravel at Zandvoort and Monza, putting further pressure on his future in the sport.

Though Wolff has declared his intention to retain his driver duo for 2026, neither Antonelli or Russell have officially signed on the dotted line of their new contract.

Mercedes must take action over Antonelli struggles

Speaking on the Sky Sports F1 podcast, 2016 champion Nico Rosberg discussed Antonelli's mental state, drawing from his own experience at Mercedes..

"He is kind of a personality like Lando or like myself, if I may add myself to this. More vulnerable, more sensitive, more dwelling on the negativities, scared of not being good enough, scared of not doing well enough," Rosberg said.

"He's doing the same little unfortunate thing that Lando does...Lando also communicates so much around his mistakes and things. We had him [Antonelli] on the Sky microphone after qualifying and by all means the qualifying was fantastic. He was only 400ths from George Russell.

"So, great qualifying, could have just focused on, ‘hey that was good, yeah, I'm really happy actually. I felt better for the first time in qualifying, really happy to be right there with George’. But instead, he spent most of the time speaking about, 'yeah, that mistake in FP2, it's still hanging in there for me now and I need to try and find a way to avoid that'.

“And that's something where someone needs to tell him that as well because it's something you can actually quite easily adapt. You just say, ‘Hey Kimi, something that could help you also just just focus on the good things from now on going forward. Don't repeat or talk about anything that happened in the past that's negative when talking to media because it has an impact and it's a wave that you're pushing on all the time. So, just go positive now'".

Rosberg then even contemplated taking matters into his own hands, saying: "You know what, I might actually write him. Why not? I don't have his number but I'll write him somehow because that's an easy advice."

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