Antonelli is struggling: Mercedes knows why!

14:43, 28 Jul

byLudo van Denderen

Andrew Shovlin, chief of trackside engineering at Mercedes, only had a few minutes after the Belgian Grand Prix. The Brit had to catch a plane back to the UK, where the team internally discusses the difficult run of the past few weeks. This seems to particularly affect Andrea Kimi Antonelli.

After a well-deserved, first podium in Canada, Antonelli is now going through a tough period - just like all of Mercedes. Shovlin totally doesn't blame Antonelli for the difficulties he is currently facing, though.

"Kimi's had a few tough weekends, but he's getting a lot of engineering support from Bono (Peter Bonnington, chief race engineer, ed.), and the engineers on that side of the garage," Shovlin said in response to a question from GPblog.

"We as a team are well aware that the thing that we need to focus on is the weaknesses in the car, not the bits that Kimi's struggling with."

"The fact is that George is leaning on all his experience, quite a bit of it, driving difficult cars to get the qualifying laps out of it."

"[During qualifying] we're finding quite a lot of time during the session. It's just because George is learning to know when he can trust the car and you can lean on it, but he's [Kimi] not getting that feeling from it inherently. He's just having to work out where will it actually stick and where won't it."

Antonelli is going through a hard time

Mercedes sees improvements in Antonelli

Furthermore, it should not be overlooked that Antonelli is only eighteen years old and is in his first season in Formula 1.

"Kimi's on a steep learning curve and he's going to be getting better as a driver. The fact that his early performances were better than they are now is almost certainly that the car's not as competitive. And you can see that mirrored in George's results."

Furthermore, it's not a new thing for young drivers to have a hard time in tough cars, Shovlin believes. "When a young driver comes in and they're in a very good car, they can often really impress."

"When a young driver comes in and they're in a difficult car, it's very hard to get it together week in, week out. And we've seen enough from Kimi to know that there's a great deal of talent there."