Antonelli opens up after Baku quali: The mental effect of seeing other F1 drivers crash

Formula 1 qualifying at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix turned into crashfest with many red flags, but Andrea Kimi Antonelli kept his cool with a surprisingly good qualifying performance.

After a tough European leg, the young Italian secured fourth place on the Baku grid – a welcome boost to his confidence.

“The pace has been strong the whole weekend, and definitely the biggest difference has been that I was able to do clean sessions and to build it up. I felt pretty ready for qualifying,” Antonelli said.

The Mercedes rookie stayed out of trouble, even though he had to visit the stewards for allegedly ignoring yellow flags during qualifying. That was handled with a reprimand, meaning Antonelli will start from fourth on the grid. It equals his best qualifying result so far for a grand prix, although the 19-year-old previously took pole for the sprint race in Miami.

With fourth place in qualifying for the main event, Antonelli matched his performance from Bahrain and Canada – but this time he has outqualified team-mate George Russell.

Despite all these positives, Antonelli made clear that qualifying was far from easy: “The conditions were very difficult with the wind. The wind was kind of a lottery because it was very gusty and very unpredictable.”

Mercedes' Kimi Antonelli

Photo by: Ozan Kose / AFP via Getty Images

Antonelli wasn’t even entirely satisfied when he appeared in the media pen. “I'm happy but disappointed at the same time, because in that last lap, I got a gust of tailwind and lost a couple of tenths – two or three tenths,” he lamented.

“But the conditions were difficult for everyone. Sometimes you get a bit lucky with the wind and other times a bit unlucky, so I cannot really complain.”

When pointed out that he didn't make any major mistakes, the Mercedes driver laughed: “Well, that's because they didn't really show my last lap! I had two big moments, one in T2 and one in Turn 7. I went full lock. I had quite a few moments, but this weekend the goal was to stay on the safe side a bit more, just trying to build it and then push more lap by lap.”

Besides the conditions, another factor made qualifying in Baku extremely challenging: the mental side of things.

All drivers in Baku were faced with the question: how much risk are you willing to take? With several cars out, a strong result was within reach, but these accidents did show how easily things can go wrong in the streets of Baku.

When asked about that mental side of things by Autosport, Antonelli admitted candidly that this played an important role during his qualifying session: “You never like seeing someone going into the wall, because it can hit your mind a bit. You see how tricky the conditions are, and you can lose a bit of focus and start to be concerned, because you know you have no margin for mistakes.”

This is why Antonelli sometimes prefers not to follow everything that happens very closely. “Sometimes I prefer not to watch,” he conceded. “What can happen to me sometimes is that I go on track and I don't push as much anymore just because I'm afraid of doing mistakes. So, today was super tricky, but I’m happy with how we stayed calm and composed.”