Kimi Antonelli’s honesty continues to be refreshing, and not just when the Mercedes Formula 1 rookie tells the media about mistakes he’s made, or admits to underperforming in some way.
After main qualifying in Spa last weekend he told us that he would be making setup changes and starting from the pitlane, a strategy that teams usually like to keep quiet until the last minute as they don’t want to give rivals information that might be useful.
On Thursday in Hungary he was happy to reveal that Mercedes is returning to the older rear suspension spec this weekend in attempt not just to find overall performance, but more specifically to help him get back his confidence in the car.
When I asked George Russell about the impact of the change he replied, “That was supposed to be a secret!”.
The Brit may well have been joking, but anyway it was another welcome sign that Antonelli remains an open book.
Mercedes introduced a rear suspension upgrade in Imola that went off the car for Barcelona, but returned for Montreal.
A Russell win and third place for Antonelli appeared to validate it as an improvement, but the Italian’s subsequent struggles and Russell’s own drop in form eventually led the team to query it. Hence the return to the older spec this weekend.
“It’s been on the cards for a little while,” said Russell in answer to my question. “It’s part of development. We’ve seen it in other teams as well.
“This season, they bring things to the car, and you’re looking for that last sort of tenth of a second, and you often see the gains. Before you put it on the car you don’t know what the limitations are going to be. So there’s no guarantee.
“That’s the reason why we’ve taken a step back. It could be a factor. We’ll use this weekend to assess. But you know, if you just look at the results as a whole, we clearly have gone backwards, and we need to go back to a baseline that we know.”
It’s clear that Antonelli has a lot riding on the change as he tries to get out of the confidence black hole that he’s been in of late.
“This weekend we are going back on the old suspension,” he said. “And that hopefully will bring the feeling back, because since we moved to that suspension, apart from Canada, I’ve been struggling to drive the car and getting the confidence.
“And probably also my side I didn’t adapt the best, because I was always trying to keep my style, and to drive the car the way I wanted, but it didn’t really work out. And George, on the other hand, has been adapting better.
“Also, he has a different driving style, but he’s been able to adapt a bit better. And I think that’s what’s been hurting me in this European season. So hopefully, by going back to the old suspension, it will bring back a bit the feeling I had prior to the start of the European season.”
Expanding on the theme Antonelli gave some intriguing details.
“Well the thing is with my aggressive style, with the way I was driving it, I was making the car even more unpredictable. So when I was really trying to push it, it’s like was hard to feel if it was going to stick or not.
“So when you’re on that fine line, it can really make the difference. If you have the confidence and you know it’s going to stick, it can really make the difference.
“But in my case, especially with the style I was driving the car, I was just making it more unpredictable, and I was just having no confidence, because every time I was even trying to push more the car was struggling to take it, or was just giving me signals that made me feel like it was not going to stick.
“So that’s why I’ve been also trying to change a bit the way I was driving to go towards the car, but I think I didn’t do a really good job on that. And, yeah, I just hope that with old suspension it’s going to bring the good feeling back.”
The fact that Mercedes did so well in Canada with the now rejected upgrade is an obvious area of interest – and Antonelli had a good explanation as to why that circuit proved so favourable.
“Definitely Montreal is a very special track,” he said. “The grip is very high, the tarmac is quite closed. But at the end of the day in Montreal it’s all straight line braking, and then you have the chicanes, which is all about setting the car nicely on the first part, and then accelerating for the second part.
“So the new suspension was really good for straight line braking and combined traction, it was giving us a really good combined traction phase. So that was the best for Montreal, and that’s why we were so strong.
“So I think that’s that was the main thing. Montreal is such a special track, and it was really good for our suspension, mainly because we had no real combined entry corner at high speed.”
He added: “When we went back after Canada, obviously we faced really high-speed tracks, and that I think hurt even more the confidence, just because it was quite tricky. And as I said before, with my driving, I was making the car even more unpredictable.
“So especially if you have an unpredictable car in a high-speed circuit, it’s really hard to push it to the limit, because you never know if it’s going to stick or not.”
Hopefully this weekend will see the Italian find the answers that he’s looking for. If he doesn’t it could be a painful summer break until action resumes at Zandvoort, if his reference to the short gap between his difficult Belgian GP and Hungary is anything to go by.
“I think in this case I like to have back to backs,” he said. “Because obviously you’re in the rhythm, which is nice. At the same time [Spa was] a difficult weekend, and I really want to do well this weekend before going to the summer break.
“And I think if I would have had a big gap, would have been really hard, because I would have been busting my balls the whole time! So I’m happy that we have another race weekend straight after…”
Adam Cooper F1 