Kimi Antonelli Admits He Drove Like His Grandmother as Title Lead Shrinks to 66 Points in Baku

• Kimi Antonelli says he was driving “like his grandmother” in damage save mode at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, missing the confidence that carried him to a stunning Monza win.
• The championship leader recovered from 16th on the grid to finish fifth, but his lead over Mercedes teammate George Russell shrank to 66 points as Russell took victory.
• Antonelli called it his worst weekend of the year for performance, pointing to a lack of practice running and floor damage picked up in contact with Oliver Bearman’s Haas.

“Just Damage Save Mode”

Kimi Antonelli says he drove “like his grandmother” at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, a race in which the championship leader lacked the confidence that took him from 19th to victory at Monza only three weeks earlier.

Antonelli staged a recovery of his own in Baku, coming from 16th on the grid, following a qualifying crash, to finish fifth. His championship lead over Mercedes teammate George Russell was cut to 66 points as Russell claimed victory from pole position.

Antonelli now leads the drivers’ standings on 302 points, with Russell up to 236 in second. Lewis Hamilton sits third on 199 points, 13 clear of Lando Norris, who failed to score in Baku, with Charles Leclerc fifth on 179. Mercedes lead the constructors’ championship on 538 points, well clear of Ferrari on 378 and McLaren on 306, a gap built race by race across a season in which Antonelli’s own consistency has been the biggest single factor.

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A Rare Off Weekend

The 20-year-old Italian has built a commanding lead at the top of the standings with remarkable consistency this season, but a technical issue with his car cost him a significant chunk of practice in Baku.

“I was driving a bit like my grandmother today, just damage save mode,” Antonelli said. “I didn’t take risks. Before making a move, I was making sure that I could go for it.”

Expectations were high given Antonelli had come from 19th on the grid to win his home race at Monza earlier in September, a result he called a dream coming true at the time, but his progress through the Baku field was far more cautious this time. The two recoveries looked similar on paper, both starting deep in the field and finishing well inside the top five, but Antonelli was clear that the feeling behind the wheel had nothing in common.

“If I had the same pace as at Monza or in previous races, it would have been different,” Antonelli said. “It would have been like just full attack. But today, I realised very early that first of all, it was a lot harder to overtake with a train of cars all in Overtake Mode, then I didn’t have the same pace as I had previously, so the mindset changed very quickly.”

Surviving the Chaos

Antonelli actually dropped a place at the start, and it took him 17 laps to work his way into the top 10, a slow, grinding climb through the field rather than the kind of charge that defined his run to victory at Monza. He benefited from mistakes made by drivers ahead of him as he made further progress through the field, and he survived a near miss at the first of two rolling restarts following Safety Cars, avoiding the collision that eliminated three cars, including Lando Norris and both Alpines. He was still caught up in contact with Oliver Bearman’s Haas at that same restart, contact that would leave its own mark on the car for the rest of the afternoon.

“After the restart, I had big floor damage. My whole left side was gone with the contact,” Antonelli said. “After that, the car was very sketchy to drive, and I still tried to get to P4, but all in all, it’s one of those days where you have to be happy with P5.”

He added: “Also seeing so many people doing mistakes, you kind of pulled back a little bit. I just took advantage of everyone else’s mistakes and just moved forward.”

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“My Worst Weekend of the Year”

Antonelli does not have long to wait to return to the track, with the second round of a triple header of races coming next weekend at the Bahrain Grand Prix, which is being hosted by Malaysia amid the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

Russell produced his most complete weekend of the year outside the opening round of the season in Australia, and would have taken a dominant win without the Safety Car interruptions that bunched the field back up twice. Antonelli remains a heavy favourite for the title, especially with Russell facing a grid penalty for an engine change before the season is out.

Even so, Antonelli was honest about how far off his own level he felt in Baku. “It’s exciting,” Antonelli told Sky Sports F1. “George has done an incredible weekend, he’s driven incredibly. He had a lot of confidence. And this weekend was my worst of the year by far in terms of performance. I wasn’t there, I wasn’t really present, especially with what happened so early on.”

The Lead Still Stands

A fifth-place finish on a bad weekend, while his closest rival won the race, tells its own story about the season Antonelli is having. His 66-point cushion over Russell remains larger than the gap between second and sixth in the standings, built on the kind of results that made Monza possible in the first place. Only one driver on the grid can turn a car he does not trust into a top-five finish and still call it his worst weekend of the year, and Antonelli did exactly that in Baku.

Antonelli’s own account of Baku was blunt about the difference between a race won on pace and one survived on caution. Missing practice time to a technical problem left him guessing at a car he did not fully trust, and the floor damage from the Bearman contact only added to a weekend where damage limitation, not attack, was the target from the opening laps. Malaysia offers a quick chance to put it behind him, with the second leg of the triple header arriving before either Mercedes driver has time to dwell on Baku for long.

What Baku showed is that Antonelli’s title lead is not built purely on outright speed every weekend. It survived a qualifying crash, a missed practice session, a first-lap place lost, and floor damage from contact with a Haas, and it still grew smaller by only 66 points rather than disappearing altogether. Russell will point to a near-perfect weekend as proof he can still close the gap when Antonelli has an off day. Antonelli’s own answer, in his words, was simpler: he knew exactly how far off his best he was, and he chose not to gamble a podium chase on a car and a circuit he did not yet trust.

More F1 Reading

• George Russell Claims First Grand Slam of His Career With Baku Win That Slashes Antonelli’s Title Lead
• Oscar Piastri Left to Explain Costly Turn 1 Lock-Up That Wiped Out His Azerbaijan Grand Prix
• Liam Lawson Admits He ‘Just Doesn’t Understand’ the Arvid Lindblad Clash That Wrecked His Baku Race
• Lando Norris Calls for a Franco Colapinto Race Ban After Baku Crash Wrecks His McLaren

Written by

Jack Renn

Jack Renn is an editor at F1 Chronicle and a veteran motorsport journalist with 25 years of experience covering Formula 1 and international motorsport. A member of the Association Internationale de la Presse Sportive (AIPS), the global body representing accredited sports journalists, Jack has spent his career reporting from paddocks and press rooms across the F1 calendar. His work spans race analysis, technical insight, and in-depth features, giving readers authoritative coverage grounded in decades of firsthand experience at the highest level of the sport.

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