Rosberg predicted Antonelli would buckle under pressure. Meeting with Wolff proves otherwise

Looking at Kimi Antonelli’s championship lead reminded Nico Rosberg of his own title-winning season in 2016, and he predicted that Antonelli would also start to buckle under the pressure and make needless mistakes through stress. Yet nothing of the sort has happened, as Toto Wolff says an encounter in his office demonstrates.

After the 2016 Japanese Grand Prix, Nico Rosberg led Lewis Hamilton by 33 points in the championship. Hamilton, however, won the final four grands prix to cut his deficit to five points. Rosberg later admitted that he had been so stressed he was no longer capable of putting together a lap good enough for pole position.

There is no sign of a similar mental block for Antonelli, however. “Yeah. What a boy!” a proud Toto Wolff told Sky Sports F1. “I was just saying before, I got a question about whether he was nervous before the race, and I said, oh, he just sneaked into my office before getting ready and said, ‘I’m going to enjoy this ride now, and it’s weird, I’m not thinking about the championship at all. Isn’t that good? Isn’t that funny?’”

The fact is, though, that Antonelli is no longer under pressure. Even before the United States Grand Prix, he knew that virtually nothing could deny him the title; for that to happen, his main rival George Russell would have to win every remaining race while he scored no more than a handful of points. He could afford to be very relaxed ahead of the start in Austin.

“So he’s on a discovery mission there also in terms of what’s happening to him emotionally, and then he just delivered from the beginning to the end. It was exceptional at any time,” said Wolff of Antonelli’s drive on Sunday.

After the race, Antonelli thanked his team for not panicking and sticking to a one-stop strategy. The pit wall believed the youngster from Bologna could keep his tyres alive until the finish.

According to Wolff, however, they were under pressure because Verstappen had opted for the undercut. “Strategy has really done a good job today. We discussed it that Max could undercut us, and we stayed firm with the decision, saying the one-stop looks like the faster strategy.”

“Norris had the hard and looked very good, so we stayed solid. And at the end, it came out pretty much what happened. In theory, it was eight seconds quicker, and at the end, it was a little bit more,” the Silver Arrows boss revealed. “We absolutely trusted the information. We didn’t want to react because the others did, which in the moment, it’s a scary call, but stick to the data, trust your data.”