Mercedes admits to misreading risk factor over Antonelli’s Monza FP1 shunt

Mercedes has admitted that it did not get it right in realising the pressures that Andrea Kimi Antonelli would face with his first FP1 outing on home ground at Monza.

The German manufacturer elected to hand Antonelli his first official practice run in its car at the Italian Grand Prix, on the same weekend that he was going to be announced as a 2025 driver.

But despite showing some impressive speed straight out of the pits, it all went wrong for Antonelli just 10 minutes into the session as he crashed out at Parabolica after pushing too hard too soon.

Reflecting on the events of that day, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff thinks it was not an error to give Antonelli his first run at Monza under such circumstances, but reckons it would have been wiser in hindsight to have let him run somewhere else first.

“I wouldn’t say it was a mistake, but I think we weren’t completely right in assessing the pressures that he could find himself under,” Wolff told Autosport.

“Why that is, is that we talked about it, and how to approach the session. He has been brilliant in testing. He has never put a single foot wrong in the many thousands of kilometres that he’s done.

“But it’s a different ball game if you’re an Italian driver, you’re 18 years old in Monza and it’s your first opportunity.

“Maybe if we had considered that as a risk factor against the set of data we had from him, probably it would have been wise to give him an FP1 that would have been in a totally different time zone than Italy. But he will learn a lot from that.”

While Antonelli’s crash was not ideal in terms of causing damage to George Russell’s car, Wolff admitted that one of his other concerns was the emotional impact that the error would have on the young Italian on a weekend when he was under the spotlight.

“I thought it’s not good for him, because I thought it’s a shame for him,” added Wolff.

“He was so quick, and that was his first session in Italy, about to be announced as a driver, which everybody pre-empted.

“I like his approach. He’s fast on the first lap out of the pits, and that is what he’s demonstrated. Obviously, I would have enjoyed him being on the leaderboard high up and that was taken away because the car flew – and some of those speeds were only achieved much later during the weekend.

“Obviously…