Mercedes race engineer Peter Bonnington has lauded his driver Kimi Antonelli’s beautiful Monaco Grand Prix pole place.
Following an exhilarating qualifying session across the unforgiving streets of Monte Carlo, Antonelli secured pole place, additional justifying Mercedes’ daring choice to advertise him at such a younger age.
Talking to Sky Sports activities F1, Bonnington, affectionately often called “Bono”, supplied perception into the speedy improvement of the present championship chief.
“I am positive he’ll come again and say there was one other tenth or two in there – he all the time does! – however [the lap] was fairly good,” Bonnington mentioned. “I did not assume it was on. Simply trying on the time delta, I believed, ‘It is going to be shut, but it surely’s not going to occur.’
“However then the final couple of corners, yeah, got here good.”
Bonnington famous the significance of giving the 19-year-old the liberty to get pleasure from racing the automotive and never get too burdened in regards to the championship combat.
“Properly, it is simply all the time chipping away, and we attempt to not deal with the aim; you all the time deal with the method,” he added. “And simply be sure he retains his head down, engaged on the suitable issues.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes
Picture by: Mark Sutton / Formulation 1 by way of Getty Photos
“Giving him the liberty to do what he enjoys, giving him the liberty to get pleasure from driving the automotive. And that is a extremely massive factor. And never stressing an excessive amount of. Let’s simply benefit from the journey, and we’ll simply get on with it, however let’s not get carried away with ourselves. Let’s simply deal with climbing every mountain at a time.”
When requested if the Italian driver retains stunning him, the race engineer continued: “He is fairly good. He is only a pleasure to work with, however he does frequently maintain stunning us. I imply, FP1, we hit the bottom working and thought, ‘Wow, we’re really in first rate form right here.’
“We have not been nice right here previously for fairly a variety of years, so we have not really obtained a good reference. So it was somewhat bit stunning how good we had been in FP1, but it surely type of fell aside in FP2.
“However the good thing—he leads me to it. He simply got here on this morning, we went by way of a couple of bits and items, jumped within the automotive, and utterly remodeled, and that is it. As quickly as he is glad within the automotive—glad driver, quick lap time.”
Antonelli has been a part of the Mercedes Junior Staff since 2019 and later joined the Mercedes F1 group in 2025 when Lewis Hamilton, whom Bonnington famously labored with, left for Ferrari. The Brackley outfit fast-tracked Antonelli by way of the junior ranks, progressing from Formulation 4 to Formulation Regional to Formulation 2.
Bonnington seen that Antonelli had one thing particular when he carried out testing with the group.
“To be truthful, it was earlier than he really began competing within the championship,” Bonnington mentioned when requested how shortly he realised Antonelli was going to be as fast as he’s now.
“After we had him within the TPC vehicles, it was fairly evident that he had the expertise immediately, you understand. You will have younger drivers come alongside and it takes them some time to rise up to hurry.
“I feel it in all probability took Kimi about 4 laps to start out matching the excessive velocity, and should you can match the excessive velocity, you understand that the child’s obtained some uncooked expertise. So we knew very early on he was a diamond within the tough, simply took somewhat little bit of sprucing. And it is the second 12 months that all the time does it.”
Pictures from Monaco GP – Saturday
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