After a promising start to the 2025 Formula 1 season marked by continuous improvement, Italian driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli is currently facing a more challenging mid-season phase. This difficult period is partly due to a Mercedes team that has taken a step backward in performance and a W16 car that has become increasingly nervous and unstable, especially when entering corners, particularly the faster ones. Kimi Antonelli is actively trying to adapt his driving style to these new conditions, but achieving stability will require progress on multiple fronts.
Ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps, Andrea Kimi Antonelli openly acknowledged how the European leg of the 2025 F1 World Championship has proven to be more difficult and troubled than initially expected. With his characteristic transparency, he explained some of the technical and personal factors that have undermined his confidence in the Mercedes W16. Compounding these issues are technical problems that forced him to retire from two Grands Prix during the season.
The Spa weekend represented a particularly low point in this complex phase of Antonelli’s rookie Formula 1 campaign. However, it also offered valuable insights into the reality faced by a young driver who is still at the very beginning of his career in the sport. Antonelli’s seat in Formula 1 was earned on the strength of his undeniable, crystal-clear talent, but at just eighteen years old, he now faces pressures and challenges far beyond anything he has experienced before.
This is not about making excuses or seeking sympathy—Antonelli is the first to reject such notions. It is well understood that a direct Formula 1 debut with Mercedes carries both significant opportunities and intense challenges. The environment is extremely demanding, requiring a driver to navigate complex situations largely on their own while also relying on a strong teammate and experienced support to help guide them through the toughest moments.
Antonelli has described this ongoing learning process with honesty and openness, another of his defining qualities, both before and after the difficult Spa weekend—arguably the toughest of his debut season in Formula 1. The situation was made even more complicated by the ongoing struggles Mercedes is experiencing as a team, which have further hindered Antonelli’s development, particularly in qualifying sessions.
Looking at the data, the gap between Antonelli and his teammate George Russell tends to grow between Q2 and Q3 qualifying, the critical phase when drivers push their cars to the limit. Russell consistently extracts around one and a half tenths of a second more than Antonelli, increasing the average lap-time gap to approximately three-tenths of a second on a single flying lap. This difference is significant in a tightly packed grid and has become even more pronounced due to recent updates that have made finding the optimal operating window of the Mercedes W16 even more challenging.
Primarily, it is Mercedes that has taken a step backward in development. Even on circuits that should favor their car and in ideal weather conditions, the Mercedes team has struggled. Rather than shining, their performance has declined, reflecting a deeper technical crisis not solely related to external factors like temperature. George Russell himself has spoken candidly about this clear step backward, with the Brackley-based team slipping towards the midfield as uncertain upgrades and numerous setup experiments have taken their toll.
This has translated into instability in the W16 at high speeds and under braking. Russell speculated that the FIA’s directive on flexible wings negatively affected the rear-end behavior, making the car even more nervous in areas where the wings previously provided stability. The team has admitted that this regulation might have had some impact, but there is a growing sense that the pursuit of performance improvements has ironically produced the opposite effect. Consequently, Mercedes is now considering reverting to a more familiar base setup rather than pushing forward with recent upgrades.
This unstable situation weighs even more heavily on Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who understandably does not have the same level of experience as George Russell to interpret and tame the car’s challenging behavior. Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes’ trackside engineering director, explained, “George uses his experience to extract the maximum from the car, while Kimi does not yet have that kind of background. But first, we need to solve some fundamental problems. Probably something has changed on the car, and we need to return to a solid baseline.”
Antonelli is paying the price for the W16’s extreme nervousness. His own words after qualifying at Spa were very clear: he was eliminated in Q1 and admitted struggling with instability on corner entry, forcing him to alter his driving style to cope with an increasingly twitchy W16. Without confidence when entering fast corners, it becomes very difficult to carry speed through them—one of the foundations of Antonelli’s natural driving style.
He openly acknowledged this challenge, placing himself at the center of this adaptation process and never using his rookie status as an excuse, because his focus remains on solving the issues at hand. This honest attitude, both with himself and with others, will be crucial for overcoming this difficult phase, not only with the support of the team but also by responding with his own determination and skills.
“The car has recently been very nervous on corner entry, and with my driving style, I find it really hard. I can’t carry the speed I want, so I’ve had to change my style. But that means I’m going slower. I’m a bit more aggressive than George; I tend to look for a lot of speed in the corners. But with this unstable car, I’m just making the problem worse. I’m trying to adapt my driving to find more balance,” Kimi Antonelli explained.
These difficulties are most apparent in high-speed corners, which at tracks like Jeddah and Imola had previously been a strength of the W16. When that stability disappears, the entire technical package suffers. For example, in Austria, Mercedes struggled specifically in the fast sections. The same pattern repeated at Silverstone, where both drivers complained about a lack of confidence in high-speed turns.
It is no coincidence that Antonelli is actually more competitive in slower corners because the car’s instability has less effect there. However, at Silverstone, that lack of confidence in the fast corners forced him to abandon a more aggressive setup—one that would have maximized lap time—in favor of greater stability. This ultimately led to what has been the most disappointing weekend for the young Italian so far: Spa, where he was twice eliminated in Q1, once again highlighting his difficulties in attacking the fastest corners.
Facing such a complex scenario, Mercedes has increasingly moved toward more extreme setups. At the Belgian Grand Prix, the team chose to prioritize top speed on the straights. George Russell posted record sector times in the first and second sectors, but was still a full second off the pace in the critical middle sector. Antonelli recorded the slowest sector time of the entire session in that tricky middle sector, underscoring just how much the W16 struggled there due to its extreme setup compromises.
It cannot be denied that Kimi Antonelli is going through a challenging period, which he fully acknowledges without hiding from it. To overcome this phase, he will need to take a step forward both mentally and technically, but progress cannot come from just one side. Even if recent results don’t fully reflect it, it is important to highlight that Antonelli’s race pace has often been competitive, with smaller time gaps, confirming that his spark and talent remain intact. This is exactly where he must restart: with clarity, trust (from everyone involved), and the unmistakable crystal-clear talent that has always defined him.
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