By Joe Cash
SHANGHAI, March 15 (Reuters) – Mercedes boss Toto Wolff sought to dampen hype building around 19-year-old Kimi Antonelli after the Italian powered to a commanding first Formula One grand prix win on Sunday in China to put himself in championship contention.
“You can kind of see the hype that is going to start now. Especially in Italy, I see already the headlines: ‘World Champion Grand Kimi’, and whatever, and that’s really not good because those mistakes are going to come,” the Austrian told reporters. “He’s just a kid, and it’s too early to even think about the championship.”
Antonelli locked up his front wheels in the closing laps of the race, going off the track, a mistake betraying his inexperience that Wolff attributed to his driver not being able to help himself setting faster and faster laps even when victory is almost assured.
“I said to Bono (Antonelli’s race engineer), ‘come on, let’s tell him to calm down… we don’t want him to lose this race!” Wolff said.
“We are going to have other moments this year where there will be mistakes, because he’s still just a very young man.”
Wolff surprised pundits when he picked Antonelli as seven-times world champion Lewis Hamilton’s replacement after the British driver shocked the sport by moving to rivals Ferrari for the 2025 season, despite more experienced drivers being available.
“At the moment (we have) a car that is capable of winning, both (drivers) have equal opportunity,” Wolff said when asked whether he was worried about tension building between Antonelli and teammate George Russell as they both chase a first world championship.
Wolff said he did not anticipate a repeat of the fierce rivalry between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg when they were both driving for the Mercedes team from 2013 to 2016.
Wolff praised Russell for stepping into Hamilton’s shoes as team leader and said Antonelli had a great role model in the British driver.
“You can never learn raw speed,” Wolff said when asked what he most liked about Antonelli as a driver. “He has that, and there’s not many that have that.
“But to become a really big champion… it needs the maturity, the personality, needs the humility, the intelligence, the empathy around the team, there’s like 20 factors that matter to become a great world champion.
“But there’s one you can’t learn, and that’s the talent.”
(Reporting by Joe Cash, editing by Pritha Sarkar)
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