Problems resulting from car changes hurting Antonelli's confidence

Mercedes’ recent struggles with its 2025 car have played a role in Kimi Antonelli’s loss of confidence, trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin believes.

Antonelli has just one point-scoring finish in the last seven rounds – his maiden podium in Canada where teammate George Russell won – and has retired on four occasions in that time. The Italian rookie admitted at the Belgian Grand Prix that he was lacking confidence in the car, and Shovlin says the gap between the two drivers is down to Russell’s experience if dealing with difficult machinery.

“I think what you've seen in the recent qualifyings is that George is leaning on his many years of experience in an F1 car to try and make the most of a difficult car when it comes to qualifying. Kimi hasn't got that to drop back on, and that's probably why you've seen a bit of a shift in his results recently.

“But it goes back to the fact we've got to solve that problem because there's still a long way to go this year. It is quite likely something that we've changed on the car, and we just need to recover a bit of... just get back to a baseline where it's working more normally.

“Kimi's had a few tough weekends, but he's getting a lot of engineering support from Bono and the engineers on that side of the garage. We as a team are well aware that the thing that we need to focus on is the weaknesses in the car, not the bits that Kimi's struggling with. And the fact is that George is leaning on all his experience, quite a bit of it driving difficult cars, to get the qualifying laps out of it.

“We're finding quite a lot of time during the session. It's just because George is learning to know when can he trust the car and you can lean on it, but he's not getting that feeling from it inherently, he's just having to work out where will it actually stick and where won't it.”

Shovlin believes car developments during this year has moved the W16 away from its consistent level of performance that it had at the start of the season, but says the team has full faith in Antonelli’s abilities given what he has already displayed when the car is strong.

“Kimi's on a steep learning curve and he's going to be getting better as a driver. The fact that his early performances were better than they are now is almost certainly that the car's not as competitive, and you can see that mirrored in George's results.

“We've seen it lots of times before as well. When a young driver comes in and they're in a very good car, they can often really impress. When a young driver comes in and they're in a difficult car, it's very hard to get it together week in, week out.

“We've seen enough from Kimi to know that there's a great deal of talent there. But what will help George will also help Kimi, and it will probably help Kimi more.”