The anticipation was so high that the disappointment ended up being just as intense. Andrea Kimi Antonelli experienced his first taste of a Formula 1 crowd in Italy, at Imola, just a few kilometers from his hometown of Bologna. It was a setting that raised expectations for the Mercedes driver even more, especially after his stunning pole position in the Miami Sprint.
While the surroundings made for an unforgettable experience—complete with classmates cheering him on—the on-track outcome was quite different. As his teammate George Russell pulled off a remarkable third-place time on medium tyres, the 18-year-old struggled to bring the soft tyres into the right window and was ultimately knocked out at the end of Q2.
You could say he’s in good company, as starting just one row ahead of him are the Ferraris of Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton. Still, that offers little comfort, and Antonelli himself admitted he had expected more from today’s qualifying session.
“It was a very disappointing session, to be honest. I didn’t have any feeling; it seemed like the tyres weren’t working, especially compared to the free practice sessions. The tyres were a bit too warm at the beginning of the lap, and I just couldn’t get them to work. I wasn’t able to extract the grip and was constantly fighting the car. It’s a shame because after FP3 it looked like the pace was better. But I’m really disappointed,” Kimi told Sky Sport F1.
Unfortunately, Imola is not a track that favors overtaking. So even thinking about fighting for points won’t be easy, especially with two major obstacles ahead of him: the Ferraris. Still, the Bologna native will do everything in his power to give it a shot. “Tomorrow will definitely be tough because it’s hard to overtake on this track. We’ll see what we can do with strategy and try to do our best,” he concluded.
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