Villeneuve warns Antonelli: “You must not let yourself be carried away by enthusiasm”

Antonelli’s magical moment After the 2nd place obtained in the first race of the world championship in Australia, the rest of the championship always smiled only on Andrea Kimi Antonelli. The 19-year-old from Mercedes took his first F1 win in China, before reaching the top step of the podium three more times in a row. A positive streak of results that brought the Bolognese to the top of the world championship standings with a 43-point advantage over George Russell, his teammate who, in the last GP in Canada, had to withdraw due to technical problems. Villeneuve’s advice But just a few days before the end of the Montreal weekend, a former Canadian F1 driver like Jacques Villeneuve issued a warning to Antonelli: not to be overwhelmed by enthusiasm in a particularly positive moment of his career. Interviewed by F1 TV, the 1997 world champion was very clear on the issue: “He must keep calm, he must not get too carried away by enthusiasm – he declared – it’s a very dangerous thing. When you think you’re untouchable, that’s when you make mistakes, and you end up with a retirement, as happened to Russell, or with an accident, you lose 25 points, the gap changes drastically and suddenly you start to doubt yourself. This is the biggest risk. At the moment, he is leading to the limit on every lap, to the point where you think ‘Wow, he can keep the car on the track’, and things go well, everything goes right.” “It won’t always be like this – he added – so, how will he react when something goes wrong? This will be the key. But at the moment, he is faster than George. He has surpassed him. The important thing for the team is that George wakes up a little and starts believing in himself again.” For Villeneuve, therefore, the greatest risk is that the current dominance could vanish in a championship characterized by reversals: “A season is like a see-saw – he added – there is a period in which everything is going well, and suddenly something goes wrong. After one or two races, we go further. This is the danger. And people think: ‘Oh, you won’t win again’. And then the other guy starts to believe it too, and it’s a continuous see-saw. We’ll see how it goes finish.”

Automobile Magazine – F1 English News , 2026-05-29 15:00:00