Toto Wolff is not usually in the business of narrating his drivers’ moods in public. The day before qualifying for the race at Sepang, the Mercedes team principal did exactly that in an interview with Sky Sports.
Russell, Wolff said, had found Antonelli’s instant impact hard to live with. After Russell took victory in the Melbourne opener, the rookie answered with five consecutive wins, and his more experienced teammate took it badly.
“He gets down. He’s someone that’s very emotional in a different way to an Italian driver as an example,” Wolff said.
“It’s difficult to cope, particularly when you have a 19-year-old coming into the team and it looks so easy.”
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Wolff’s framing was that Russell has now adjusted to the new order in the garage.
“He has now settled into this reality of ‘this is going to be really hard because he’s so good’.”
From Melbourne to Baku
Russell opened the campaign with victory in Australia. Antonelli’s run of five straight wins that followed, together with an engine failure at the Canadian Grand Prix in May, left the Briton chasing, and he gathered only two podiums before the August break.
Baku flipped the mood. Russell took pole by eight tenths, led every lap and held off Max Verstappen by 0.196 seconds for his third win of the season, cutting the title gap to 66 points.
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Wolff insisted the team would not pick sides.
“I can never, and the team would never, favour a driver. May the best man win.”
Antonelli: ‘Worst weekend of the season’
Antonelli himself has not hidden that Baku stung. Speaking in Malaysia before Friday practice, the 20-year-old rated it his lowest point of the campaign and acknowledged Russell was arriving on momentum.
“For sure. He did an incredible weekend in Baku and he’s got the momentum, but on my side, it was definitely the worst weekend of the season for me,” Antonelli told reporters in Sepang.
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“Of course the mindset is always the same to go out there and win, but for sure George has been doing great, especially last weekend, and it’s going to be a tough challenge but I’m looking forward to it.”
First major upgrade since Canada
Mercedes have brought their first substantial upgrade package since Canada to Malaysia, with engineers targeting around three tenths of a second across the car. Neither Russell nor Antonelli has raced an F1 car at Sepang, which returns to the calendar for the first time since 2017 after the Bahrain Grand Prix was relocated here.
Qualifying runs on Saturday, October 3, with lights out on Sunday, October 4.
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