Austin (AFP) – Kimi Antonelli stands at the threshold of Formula One’s hall of fame, needing just two more points to become the sport’s youngest champion and first Italian in 73 years. His commanding triumph in Sunday’s United States Grand Prix was acclaimed as “his best so far” by Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff, endorsing his talent again and proving that the ‘silver arrows’ remain the team to beat.
With five races remaining, AFP Sport looks at three things we learned from the 20-year-old Italian’s ninth win of an outstanding season:
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**Antonelli maturing fast and adding strategic authority to his arsenal**
A brief comparison with the misfortunes and struggles of his teammate and nearest rival George Russell reveals how rapidly Antonelli has developed from a daring, precociously talented kid into a maturing competitor. Team chief Wolff, having seen him deliver staggering wins in Monaco and Monza, called Sunday’s success “the race of a champion who isn’t the champion yet.” It is as if his passage from teenager to twenty-something has taken him into a higher level of authoritative and complete racing—adding a strategic dimension to the raw pace that set him apart.
While the luckless Russell, who began the season as favourite for the drivers’ title and won the opener in Australia, laboured to eighth—the minimum required to keep alive his academic title fight—Antonelli skated home on the same one-stop strategy. Hampered by an early and harsh five-second penalty, Russell admitted he could not deliver the pace or panache needed. Before the race, Antonelli had called on Wolff in his office. “He comes in, sits on my chair, feet up, and chats away saying ‘this is so funny – I’m not thinking about the championship at all!’ in a kind of youngish excitement, like it’s surreal.” Wolff added that this approach to such a major day in his embryonic career was “innate in him and not something to be trained for.”
Antonelli himself recognised this win as better than Monza, where he was 19th on the grid, because of how he and his crew developed performance through the weekend and executed their bold strategy after seizing pole. Wolff said the team’s update was difficult to manage for the drivers, adding that Antonelli’s style “just glues with the car” while Russell “just struggled so much.”
**Red Bull attack runs out of tyres and audio**
After two consecutive wins, four-time champion Max Verstappen and his Red Bull team were beaten and ran out of audio, tyres, and teamwork briefly, with Isack Hadjar reluctant to make life easy for Verstappen to pass under team orders. The French tyro, who started third and finished sixth, called for a review and a new clutch design, blaming poor radio coverage as he “had the wrong map and was losing a second a lap” on the hard tyres. His grumbles mirrored the Dutchman’s. “Maybe we should start communicating in sign language – it’s probably cheaper,” said Verstappen, who was third behind Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari. “It’s a disaster, really frustrating.” He added that Red Bull had been “a little bit average” in the race and that his strategy of opening with two stints on soft tyres had failed.
**Ferrari frustrated by failing to convert race pace into victory**
A weekend of high potential turned into frustration for Ferrari as they fell away in final qualifying and finished second and fourth in the race. They had topped all three practice sessions. “Charles was targeting P1,” said team boss Fred Vasseur. “When you finish P2, you are not happy, but I like this as a feeling. And without the Virtual Safety Car at the end, Lewis may have come back to pass Max for third. Overall, a good weekend for pace and execution. All went well, except for the final lap in Q3 when with the tyres, the window to improve is very narrow… and you can go from a super result to nowhere for a gust of wind or a slide too much. But sometimes, this frustration is good.”
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