MADRID -- Kimi Antonelli has likened the challenge of the brand-new Madring to driving like a grandmother in the opening stages of Sunday’s Spanish Grand Prix.
The Italian youngster was on provisional pole and was looking like the man to beat in qualifying before reigning world champion Lando Norris stunned him to the line by 0.011 seconds.
But the drivers have still been getting to grips with the track and heading into the weekend have referred to the the Madring to being “the most risky” on the Formula 1 calendar and “probably a car killer.”
Antonelli joked that drivers will be driving like a grandmother and has warned that the race will be about managing the tyres.
“Yeah, probably it’s going to be grandmother driving in the first 10 laps, but let’s see,” Antonelli said.
“We saw in the long run how steep the degradation can be, especially if you push too early, so let’s see. We’ll try to see in the moment, maybe tomorrow we’re going to race and the degradation is going to be much lower, so we just need to see in the moment.
“Tomorrow is going to be a lot about managing the tyres and not degging [degradation] off, you know, so much as well. We don’t really know how the hard tyre is, how resilient it is, so, you know, tomorrow we might have two stops, three stops.
“We’ll see, but the key is, yeah, especially in that first stint is to try and manage as much, you know, without giving up too much time trying to manage the tyres.”
Drivers and teams have no historic data to refer to when it comes to knowing how the car will perform this weekend, but one of the key talking points have been around how difficult it’s going to be to overtake.
“I think it’s going to be very difficult,” Antonelli added. “In practice, I spent two laps behind the Williams trying to painfully get past, but just really difficult, especially because already the deg is quite big, and when you’re behind, you start sliding more, and it just makes your life a bit tougher.
“The only thing you can do is try to put pressure on the car in front, try to make them do a mistake or make the deg a bit more, and then you try to play with strategy. But, yeah, especially when you have a very similar pace, it’s difficult to make a move.”
Antonelli is currently leading the world championship by 66 points adrift from his Mercedes teammate George Russell and will be aiming to take his seventh win of the season.
