Antonelli not thinking of title challenge yet, but wants to keep 'raising the bar'

Kimi Antonelli says he needs to keep raising the bar to entertain a true title challenge, after feeling he got “very lucky” on his way to victory at the Japanese Grand Prix.

The Italian became the youngest ever championship leader at the age of 19 years, seven months and four days, courtesy of winning at Suzuka while teammate George Russell could only finish fourth. That win came despite Antonelli dropping from pole position to sixth place on the opening lap, climbing back into the top three before a well-timed safety car allowed him to make a pit stop when the race was neutralized to regain the lead from Oscar Piastri and Russell.

“it was nice to be back on the top step,” Antonelli said. “Obviously, a very special win and a very special track. On one side I’m very happy, but on the other side I’m a bit disappointed with how the start went. It’s an area where I need to work a lot, because it’s definitely not good enough and I’m just making my life a lot harder.

“So, definitely a lot of work to do still. But I was very lucky, of course, with the timing of the safety car, but then pace was very, very strong and really happy with that.

“I think it was a bit difficult to get by when I was behind Charles [Leclerc] because we obviously had two completely different deployments and it was just hard to find the right place to overtake. Then he went back in the pits and then we improved a lot with the pace.

“Obviously I was lucky with the safety car. But without the safety car, I don’t know how the outcome would have been. Definitely would have been a lot more difficult, but you never know.”

With his ascent into the championship lead after back-to-back victories, Antonelli says he expects a response both from his teammate and rivals.

“I’m not thinking too much about the championship,” he said. “Of course it’s great, but it’s still a long way to go and need to keep raising the bar because George is very quick and for sure he’s going to be back at his usual level, and also competitors eventually they will get closer. I think we need to keep our head down and keep raising the bar.”

One area Antonelli says he wants to focus during the enforced break in races – due to the cancellation of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian GPs – is on race starts.

“Luckily I’ve got three weeks so I can practice some clutch drops just to get a better feel with it, because definitely it’s been a weak point so far this year,” he said. “I need to improve that because you can easily win or lose races with that.

“I think I dropped the clutch a bit too deep, deeper than what I should have, and obviously the tires were also a bit colder, so obviously I went beyond the grip that was available and just lost a lot of places.

“Today was completely my fault. But together, me and George, we’ve been struggling a bit more than what we would have anticipated since the start of the season, and today the McLaren got a really good start, so they’re clearly doing something better, for sure also on driver input. In this case Oscar did much better than me because… I cannot say, but I ‘effed’ it up pretty badly. But I just need to keep working on that area.”