Is the risk that Mercedes took with Antonelli paying off?

Yahoo

06-05-2025

Oscar Piastri claimed victory in Miami to make it three wins in a row, beating team-mate Lando Norris in a McLaren one-two.
Piastri now leads the drivers' championship by 16 points from Norris.
Meanwhile, Ferrari were embroiled in a controversy over team orders after Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc were both asked to swap positions.
BBC Sport F1 correspondent Andrew Benson answers your latest questions after the Miami Grand Prix.
What on earth is wrong at Ferrari? - Jonathan
After the Miami Grand Prix, the questions in Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur's news conference focused largely on the team orders debate between the team and drivers Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc during the race.
Vasseur became a little frustrated with this, and in the end said: "It's not the story of the day," pointing out that the only difference it made in the end was which driver finished seventh and eighth.
"I would be much more keen to speak about why we finished one minute behind McLaren," he said.
Vasseur claimed that in the race, the car's pace was a match for the Red Bull of Max Verstappen and the Mercedes, but Ferrari paid the price for their poor grid positions. McLaren, he admitted, were "on another planet".
Charles Leclerc qualified eighth and Lewis Hamilton 12th, Ferrari's worst qualifying result of the season, and that was largely because they were struggling to get the best out of new tyres.
That's why Hamilton and Leclerc ran on used tyres in the second set of qualifying. As Vasseur put it: "Everybody improved 0.5-0.6secs between scrubbed to new and we lost 0.2-0.3secs."
Asked why Ferrari struggled with tyres in Miami, he said: "That's a good question. If I knew the answer, I would do a step forward and we would have fixed it between Q2 and Q3.
"You always have to operate the tyres in a very narrow window. It's different from track to track, it's different from compound to compound, from track temp to track temp. And it's always after the session that you say, 'OK, I could have done differently.'"
But that was just Miami. The wider issue is that the car is not where Ferrari expected it to be at the start of this season, after running McLaren so close for the constructors' title last year.
Other teams - especially McLaren - made more progress over the winter, and Ferrari simply need to make the car faster.
On average, it is the slowest of the top four teams, and Ferrari have scored only one grand prix podium, thanks to Leclerc in Saudi Arabia.
Hamilton won the sprint in China, but that seems to be a case of him and the team finding a good set-up after just one practice session, while others did not, and then benefiting from clean air at the start of the race.
As Leclerc put it: "Lewis did an outstanding job. Maybe some drivers didn't put everything together in (sprint) qualifying and he managed to do that and managed to outperform the car a bit.
"Then tyre degradation being a big thing, when you start in front, everything comes to you a bit more. Lewis made a difference on Friday and Saturday."
There are what Vasseur calls "some small upgrades" coming at the next two races in Imola and Monaco. And Vasseur hopes that the stricter rules on front wing deflection that are being introduced at the subsequent race in Spain will make a difference.
"Everybody will have a new front wing in Barcelona," he said. "By definition and by regulation. I think it will be perhaps a reset of the performance of everybody."
The implication is that McLaren are benefiting from exploiting this phenomenon. McLaren themselves say they expect it to make little difference to them.
Ferrari progressed well with upgrades in both 2023 and 2024 after difficult starts. Vasseur remains confident they can do the same this year.
Hamilton said on Sunday: "I feel optimistic for the future. I think this car really does have performance. Something's holding us back at the moment. We've lost performance since China. And it's there, it's just we can't use it. Until we get a fix for that, then this is where we are."
'Fire in my belly' led to team orders controversy - Hamilton
Verstappen 'not racing very smart' - Norris
Is the risk that Mercedes took bringing Kimi Antonelli into the team now rather than later paying off? – Callum
Kimi Antonelli had had a steady start to his debut Formula 1 season, as he said was his plan from the start - he wanted to build steadily and not make big errors.
In Miami, the 18-year-old for the first time showed a glimpse of the high potential Mercedes believed him to have, and which persuaded them to throw him in at the deep end this year.
He was confident in the car from the start, and he was always the faster Mercedes driver over one lap.
Pole for the sprint race was an outstanding performance, and he repeated it with third on the grid for the grand prix. Neither race went as well, but team principal Toto Wolff believes that was evidence of Antonelli's continued need to learn in the complex world of F1.
Wolff described the qualifying performances as "another proof of his talent and a good indication of how the future can be".
He added: "In the race, challenging, because it's so difficult here to find the right reference. The medium (tyre) stint, quick enough, you know, with George (Russell) holding on in the back on the hard tyre.
"And then when he went into the hard, he just lacked experience managing it the right way.
"(We're) finding the right references and trying to guide him, but when you're in that car, it's not easy. It's just part of the learning curve."
Wolff always said that it would take time for Antonelli to adapt to F1, and that's the way it is working out.
Antonelli has a long way to go before he proves he is the generational talent Mercedes - and others who have worked with him in the junior categories - believe him to be, but Miami was a good step in the right direction.
How can Fernando Alonso turn his season around, having not scored a single point up until now? – Andrew
It's fair to say that Fernando Alonso is not having his best season, and it's highly unusual to see that he has scored no points while team-mate Lance Stroll has scored 14 points and is 10th in the championship.
The bottom line is that the Aston Martin is a poor car. Alonso has made a couple of mistakes, but fundamentally he has been unlucky and Stroll has benefited from circumstances.
Alonso is still comfortably faster than the Canadian - the two-time champion is 7-1 ahead across all qualifying sessions at an average advantage of 0.321 seconds.
He was driving well in Australia in the wet in an impressive sixth place, but crashed on gravel at Turn Six. The chaos in the race helped Stroll, driving well, to move up and claim that sixth place.
Stroll then benefited from the disqualification of both Ferraris in China, and was promoted to ninth place. There, Alonso retired early on with his brakes on fire.
Stroll benefited again from the chaos in the Miami sprint, where Alonso was driving well and on course for points when he was taken out in a crash with Liam Lawson.
His spin in the grand prix, while uncharacteristic, "didn't change anything," he said.
"I lost five seconds and then 10 laps later I catch the same group of cars and was still in the same place and then benefited from the virtual safety car.
"Even with that, not enough (pace) to be closer to the cars in front today. We need to get better for Imola. We are not happy being at this pace but we are all trying the best we can."
Aston Martin team boss Andy Cowell praised Alonso's qualifying performance in Japan as "outstanding" and in Jeddah as "impressive". But with no retirements, Alonso finished just out of the points in both races.
The reality is that the car is eighth fastest in qualifying on average and in Miami was the slowest of all. So scoring points is always going to be difficult.
Cowell said in Miami that Aston Martin were "not a happy camp and we're trying to work out (what has gone wrong)".
Alonso was frustrated Aston Martin had rejected his calls for an earlier change to slicks in the sprint on Saturday in Miami, and said on Sunday: "I am trying to do my best behind the wheel.
"I nailed Japan, P11. Jeddah was nearly perfect. As I said (before), we have three or four opportunities when chaos happens and you have the opportunity to score points.
"There were three already this year. Australia, and I had the mistake and went on the gravel and went off. China, with three or four cars disqualified, and I had brakes on fire on lap one.
"And yesterday the track was for dry tyres and we kept with the inters for too long.
"We missed three opportunities to score points in my case and it is going to be one or two more in the season. I guess let's hope for some more."
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