Online Reporter
He won’t lightly admit it, being the team player all drivers pretend to be, but it was precisely what George Russell did not need as he focuses on winning the Formula One World Championship.
Russell would have preferred to have kept his Mercedes team-mate Kimi Antonelli in his box.
Three or four rounds without a win for the 19-year-old Italian would have vapourised the kid’s confidence. In that scenario, Master George, himself 28, would have landed a major psychological blow.
Instead of that, there is a shaft of hope for young Kimi after he won the Chinese Grand Prix last Sunday, the second event of a season now 22-races long since the cancellation of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian editions. Russell, for the record, won the first race in Melbourne.
Antonelli is hugely talented and described by some in his team as a generational talent.
Generational talent? It may be reality or hope or hyperbole. The jury is out on that vaulting assessment, though his winning sequence through the junior ranks suggests his ability is strong, very strong.
Yet, as one senior figure in the sport who has worked closely with some of the top drivers of the past 25 years told me privately: ‘Kimi is quick, but he makes too many mistakes.’
Probably correct about Antonelli at this formative stage of his career but he did not make many missteps, if any, in winning in Shanghai. He started on pole, fended off Russell at the start and knew he could deal with the threat of the Ferraris, the next best cars under the new regulations but not quite on Mercedes’ level once the early skirmishes have played out.
There is no desire here to be grudging about the best day of his life but there was a smidgeon of fortune to his victory. Russell was hampered in qualifying by technical issues and had to set his final flying lap on cold tyres and with his battery reserves down. To start second on the grid, and finish second, was a triumph of its own for Russell.
The Briton goes into next Sunday’s Japanese Grand Prix leading the championship over Antonelli by four points and as master of his own destiny. As well as winning the opening round in Melbourne, he took the sprint in China the day before the main race.
As for Antonelli last Sunday, he became the second youngest driver to win a grand prix, with only the then 18-year-old Max Verstappen ahead of him in that reckoning. Which is some company to keep. And he broke down in tears after achieving his landmark success.
So what of Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who like Russell is a product of the Mercedes junior programme?
Born in Bologna, he is a motor-racing nut, never happier than to be at a track. He has a photographic memory for every lap time he has set, down to thousandths of a second.
Aged seven, he was smuggled into the German Grand Prix in a stack of tyres by his father Marco, a ‘gentleman’ driver, then competing in the Porsche Supercup series. Kimi has lived and breathed the sport ever since. – Daily Mail UK
Mathew Masinge