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.
Kimi Antonelli demonstrated he is unwilling to play a backseat role in this year’s championship
The young Italian took home his first chequered flag in F1 with a commanding win in China
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.
Regarded as a generational talent by those at Mercedes, there is a lot of optimism surrounding the young Italian
He also has Lewis Hamilton’s former race engineer Peter Bonnington in his corner
I am told he has an impish sense of humour as befits his age. He also completed his education at the insistence of his mother Veronica, sitting his exams last year during his rookie season.
Veronica’s credo was: ‘I don’t care if he’s a driver; my greatest pride is having raised a good boy.’
Which those at Mercedes say she has. For example, he dotes on his younger sister Maggie. Russell treats him as part-mentee, as well as a rival, nurturing the younger man’s development.
A source said: ‘George knows what it is like to be exposed in a major team at a young age, having driven with Lewis (Hamilton) at Mercedes after joining from Williams. So that is something he can pass on to Kimi.’
A leaf Antonelli has taken from his older partner’s book is that he put money behind the bar in China after his car was rebuilt in Melbourne, where he had a big smash in practice.
It was repaired at great speed and he wanted to demonstrate his gratitude to his mechanics for not only enabling him to start the race but finish it in second place. It showed a Russell-esque understanding of the wider picture.
Winning in China meant the pre-planned ‘thank you’ drinks for his garage took on a more celebratory air.
He is also fortunate to have fallen under the wing of Hamilton’s former race engineer Peter Bonnington, who treats him almost like a son. Their relationship is close and productive.
But a senior figure in F1 fears the youngster ‘makes too many mistakes’ in these early stages of his career
Hamilton posed for pictures with Antonelli and Bonnington after the China race, a rope thrown across the generations. In a demonstration of Mercedes’ early dominance, it should be noted that Hamilton, in third place, was 25 seconds back from Antonelli, indicating that the fight for the title looks as if it will for now at least be internal.
If so, will it boil over as the one between Hamilton and Nico Rosberg did in 2016, when they clashed on and off track? No, says team principal Toto Wolff.
‘Nico and Lewis knew each other from karting, from the early days, being friends,’ said the Austrian. ‘But also having this social fight that was always ingrained in there. And then a friendship became a rivalry, and then animosity, and it was a tension between two very different characters.
‘Drivers are how they are in order to win races and championships. And the moment you sniff that of the other’s intensity, obviously then the elbows come out.
‘That’s something that the team needs to manage.
‘So far, George has had the upper hand a little bit.
‘George has always respected Kimi, and acknowledged his speed and his ability. And now Kimi has that win in the pocket. But Kimi is just a kid. So it’s just too early to think about a championship.’
Yes, despite Antonelli’s moment in the sun, of which there will surely be more, it still feels as if Russell will get the job done.
