‘Wouldn’t say it was a mistake, but’ – Toto Wolff reveals his Kimi Antonelli admission

Toto Wolff admits, in hindsight, Mercedes placed unnecessary pressure on Kimi Antonelli by giving him his first public F1 outing at his home race at Monza.

Antonelli, who at the time was being tipped to join Mercedes for the F1 2025 season, made his Formula 1 track debut in Friday’s opening practice at the Italian Grand Prix as he fulfilled one of Mercedes’ two mandatory young driver outings.

Toto Wolff: Risk factor versus the set of data

Although he had already driven Mercedes’ F1 cars, his Monza outing was his first taste of a Formula One FP1 session, and it was in front of his home crowd.

Quick out of the blocks, the 18-year-old went purple on his very first flying lap and was even faster on his second only for it to go horribly wrong at Parabolica.

Losing the back end of the car through Parabolica, he flew through the gravel before hitting the wall with a violent impact that measured 52G.

Wolff concedes in hindsight Monza may not have been the best place to give a young Italian driver his debut outing.

“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,” the Mercedes team boss told Motorsport.com.

“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.”

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Wolff was quick to point out after the crash that what Antonelli “did, the car couldn’t take”, the team boss adding that what Mercedes saw in his brief run was “just astonishing”.

But while Mercedes hailed his pace, Wolff admits he was worried the crash would have an emotional impact on the youngster.

“I thought it’s not good for him, because I thought it’s a shame for him,” he explained. “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 he was too fast for the condition of the track and for the car at that stage, so it was balancing the ambition, the motivation and the skill versus also the experience that FP1 is FP1.

“I knew that that was going to hurt him, that was going to hurt him emotionally.”

In what was a remarkable 24-hour period for Antonelli, the Italian was then officially announced as a Mercedes F1 driver for the 2025 season on the Saturday morning at Monza.

“No, it’s not a gamble,” Wolff said of his signing. “It would be a gamble if you wouldn’t believe in his capability.

“We need to give him the time to develop. We don’t expect, touching down in Australia [next year], and him blasting everyone. That’s not the expectation.

“I think it shouldn’t be anybody’s expectations. Give him time to develop, and then he can become very good. But he needs to be given the time.”

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