Mercedes spotlight Kimi Antonelli ‘gaming’ benefit for F1 guidelines revamp

Kimi Antonelli’s “spare mental capacity” has been hailed as an element that might show a bonus with the wide-sweeping new F1 laws for this yr.

Antonelli loved a strong rookie marketing campaign with Mercedes, though it was offset by a outstanding run of outcomes that noticed him begin and end the season fantastically over the long-haul legs, however undergo miserably within the center on the European races.

After studying one sort of automobile final yr, now the 19-year-old successfully has to start out over again for this season, given the novel modifications to the principles, and the completely different type that might be required to extract essentially the most from it in qualifying and over a race.

Trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin, nevertheless, feels Antonelli will comfortably be capable to adapt as a consequence of one side of his life that can stand him in good stead.

“We’re starting to understand him a lot better,” stated Shovlin, talking to pick out media, together with RacingNews365, on the finish of final season.

“He’s getting very comfortable in the team. He’s comfortable in his own performance, and we’re excited to see how he does [this year].

“Adapting to the principles, that can actually be about follow. Kimi, as a result of he is a teenager, has a reasonably spectacular potential to take a seat within the sim and drive all of it day lengthy.

“I think all the younger drivers who’ve grown up gaming develop that spare mental capacity to drive while talking, while making fun of everyone else who’s on the game with them.

“It does assist to have that cognizant factor of pondering when you drive, and the driving turns into secondary. It frees up your mind to consider power, technique, and the way you overtake.

“But he enjoys driving it [the simulator], and he’ll do as many hours as is required, and that’s by far the biggest bit.”

Antonelli ‘received forward of himself’

Naturally, Shovlin witnessed Antonelli enhance in all areas final season, particularly, comparable to “the flow of a race weekend” but in addition much less apparently with “the ins and outs of all of our engineering tools to try and balance the car”.

Hailing Antonelli as “very strong” in explaining what the automobile is doing, the younger Italian labored with race engineer Pete Bonnington to know the instruments at Mercedes’ disposal, and work on finetuning.

“Because Kimi can describe to Bono exactly what the car is doing, Bono knows what to do with it,” stated Shovlin. “Over time, you can start to explain how everything’s working and all the various ways of balancing the mechanical balance of the car around the lap with all the tools we’ve got.

“That’s more and more coming to him, they usually [young drivers] begin to construct up this form of database of ‘When I made this modification, that is what the automobile felt like, due to this fact if I do know I’ve received this stability that is likely to be a helpful trick to deploy’.”

An area where Shovlin feels Antonelli needs to significantly improve is understanding how to approach a race, a qualifying session, and learning how hard he needs to push.

Shovlin claims that last season, Antonelli’s lap execution was often lacking, resulting in him getting snaps through the first couple of corners due to him applying too much power.

The result was him being unable to shed the higher temperature in his tyres around the lap, with qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix a good example of that when he qualified a lowly 15th. “He simply overcooked it,” said Shovlin.

He added: “As the outcomes have been getting higher in the direction of the tip of the yr, there have been plenty of classes the place he most likely received a bit forward of himself. He carried out very nicely in Q1, Q2, after which he simply overdid it in Q3 and paid the worth.

“But this is all the real fine detail that drivers with six years, 10 years under their belt have learned by going through it, learning it the hard way.

“What has been good is that he did get by way of to Q3, which implies you may maximise the educational there, and he completed all of the races. Again, you maximise that studying. It might be simpler for him when he comes spherical to doing all of the tracks once more.”