Why ‘outflanked’ Wolff wouldn’t entertain a Kimi Antonelli loan deal

Still feeling the sting from losing Max Verstappen a decade ago, F1 TV’s Alex Jacques reckons that motivated Toto Wolff to put Kimi Antonelli in the Mercedes in his debut F1 campaign.

Antonelli joined the Formula 1 grid this season, having graduated from Formula Regional European Championship just two years prior.

Kimi Antonelli’s results and confidence have taken a knock in recent races

Skipping Formula 3 before doing one year in F2, it has been a big leap up the order for the Italian teenager. And it’s shown in recent weeks.

Although he started strongly, his results since Formula 1 began the European leg of the championship have taken a noticeable dip, as has his confidence.

The 18-year-old was visibly emotional at the Belgian Grand Prix where he was eliminated in Q1 and recorded a sixth non-score in seven races.

He did bounce back a week later to head into the summer break with a top-ten result, P10 in Hungary, but it does have outsiders pondering if it has been too much too soon to ask of the Italian.

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Red Bull’s motorsport advisor Helmut Marko recently called out Mercedes for exposing Antonelli to “the pressure of F1” while former Haas team boss Guenther Steiner said he hoped the driver was “not broken”.

Unlike Antonelli’s team-mate George Russell, Wolff didn’t place the Italian with Williams as a starting position to hone his craft, he went straight into Mercedes.

Jacques reckons that’s because Wolff may have feared another Verstappen situation when he passed on signing the Dutchman rather than risk him at Mercedes only for Verstappen to go on to win four World titles and 65 grands prix with Red Bull.

“I think he was very stung by missing out on Max Verstappen,” Jacques told F1 Oversteer. “He was only in his second year as a team principal in 2015, and he got outflanked.

“Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes were all in for Max Verstappen, and Red Bull had the junior team. They could elevate him to Formula 1 immediately, and Wolff lost out on Max Verstappen, who’s gone on to win the most races of the decade so far.

“So, he’s been stung by that in the past.

“I think that informed his faith in giving a young driver a chance earlier on. And then you mentioned a loan deal with another team.

“He’s been stung by that in the past as well, with Esteban Ocon, who had to sit on the sidelines for a year after a team reneged on an agreement that Wolff believed they had, and he lost out on a year of racing as a result of that. He had to be a reserve at Mercedes. So, I think both of those things played an enormous part.”

The F1 TV pundit believes this time Wolff had to seize the moment, with that decision made easier by next season’s huge reset with all-new cars and engines on the grid.

“We know Kimi Antonelli is a hugely rated prospect, and realistically, conversations in the paddock always talk about the next big thing,” Jacques continued.

“So, Kimi Antonelli had been on the radar of the paddock for a long time. Mercedes got him first, okay? They got him signed to the Driver Academy. But as we’ve seen with drivers and drivers’ academies in the past, that’s no guarantee either.

“So, I think the combination of everything I’ve spoken about meant that Toto Wolff was absolutely determined that there would be no repeat; he didn’t want to have to deal with another team.

“He wanted one year, I believe, of Antonelli learning the ropes, ready for the big regulation reset with a year of experience.

“He’s had a huge amount of testing with old Mercedes machinery as well. And I think all of that informed his desire to vault him up the ladder far quicker than you would do if Lewis Hamilton had been a long-term contract, for example.”

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