Toto Wolff couldn’t have coped with Kimi Antonelli’s pressure: “When I was 19, I was an idiot”

Mercedes Formula 1 team principal Toto Wolff couldn’t have coped with Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s pressure as a 19-year-old, explaining he was “a bit of an idiot” at that age.

Antonelli became F1’s third-youngest driver in history this season at 18 years old thanks to his single-seater prowess – four titles in Formula 4 and Formula Regional. He also was the first F1 debutant in a top team since Lewis Hamilton at McLaren and Heikki Kovalainen at Renault in 2007.

Antonelli had shown signs of being affected by pressure in a home outing at Monza last year, crashing out of FP1 on his first push lap, and struggled again under the weight of expectations in 2025 – with waves of social media abuse compounding his issues.

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Still, Mercedes chiefs have enthused about the Italian youngster’s professional attitude relative to his age.

“I would say it's almost been a game of three thirds,” Mercedes High Performance Powertrains managing director Hywel Thomas told the Beyond The Grid podcast about Antonelli’s maiden season, after the rookie came seventh in the 2025 drivers’ championship.

“Because he came into the team, and of course in those early races you're like, ‘Wow, this is incredible, that this guy with such little experience is really putting it out there’. Then he had his blip and the results weren't there. And now he's come back super strong. Really impressive.

“And to think, you know, he's the age that he is and he's dealing with it all. And he's very, very intelligent. He deals with people really, really well, and [he’s] very, very mature. Now, I've got kids his age and they're not that mature, I can tell you that for nothing, they wouldn't like to hear that, but they're not.”

Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes, Toto Wolff, Mercedes

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images

Wolff concurred: “The thing is that when we speak with Kimi, we are brutally honest when it's good and when it's bad. And then you remind yourself that you're not sitting opposite an adult. Kimi's more kid than an adult.

“And you have to remind yourself that he's just 19. Yes, he's a pro in the car and he's been karting all his life and racing all his life. But from the maturity, we're expecting an acceleration of growth that is almost too difficult. He's been thrown into this, and I think when you look at some of the worse races, it's just overwhelming the experience that he's making with all of the interest, the media pressure – they're writing you up and down.

“You have an extremely quick and experienced team-mate [George Russell] and he's still coping. And I think that shows that he has great potential for the future, because like Hywel says, when I was 19, I was a bit of an idiot. I wouldn't have been able to cope with the pressures that he is. And that's why, when I talk to him, I'm a little bit harsh with him, I need to almost take myself back and say, ‘Hold on a minute, you know, he's a kid’. And that's quite an interesting learning for us also.”

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