Toto Wolff knew Monaco GP blunder was coming - and his response speaks volumes

Daily Mirror

25-05-2025

Kimi Antonelli became the latest in a long line of victims to the Monaco Grand Prix street circuit when he crashed his Mercedes while pushing during F1 qualifying
On the face of things, the last couple of weeks have been a chastening experience for young Kimi Antonelli. After failing to manage his energy at Imola, resulting in a Q2 elimination in qualifying before a mechanical DNF in the race, he crashed while pushing too hard in Monaco.
It was the sort of error many great drivers have made before him. The tight and twisty Monaco street circuit is not for the faint of heart and even the most minor of miscalculations can end in disaster, making it especially difficult for rookies who have never been around it in a Formula 1 car.
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Antonelli was one of those and found out how tough it is the hard way, clipping the inside barrier in the first part of the Nouvelle Chicane before burying the nose of his Mercedes into the wall. And that was the end of his qualifying, meaning he started Sunday's race 15th.
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Two such poor qualifying results on back-to-back race weekends would usually be a concern for a team like Mercedes. But though they have fast-tracked Antonelli into F1, they have made it clear that they will approach his development with plenty of patience now that he is there.
They believe the young Italian can be the next big superstar of the sport if they help him to develop at the right rate. And team principal Toto Wolff made it clear he was expecting some difficult periods for the 18-year-old when speaking even before the season began.
The Austrian said of his teenage starlet: "Kimi is going to learn, and sometimes we will tear our hair out, and other times, we will see moments of brilliance. But it is going to be a year of managing expectations for Kimi and preparing our driver line-up for 2026."
Antonelli has already shown impressive maturity beyond his years in recent weeks, to match his undeniable talent. After the Imola race, he was the first to hold his hands up and admit he had got his approach to his first F1 home race all wrong and that he had failed to properly manage his energy.
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And he was open about his "unnecessary and costly" crash as he spoke after qualifying in Monaco too. "I'm gutted by how today's qualifying session went," he said. "We are always close to the limit in Monaco and the line between getting it right and getting it wrong is thin. That is particularly true come qualifying.
"I tried to find those missing tenths but ultimately had an unnecessary and costly mistake. I turned slightly earlier than usual in turn 10 and clipped the barrier. I damaged the front, and I know there was nothing I could do from there and was a passenger into the barrier. I had enough pace to get through to the latter parts of qualifying, so it was a costly error."
To make matters worse for Mercedes, George Russell suffered a loss of power in Q2 which saw him come to a stop on track and fail to set a time in that part of the session. That meant he would start 14th on the grid, just one place ahead of Antonelli with both several spots away from the points-paying positions.