Kimi Antonelli had just snatched his first Monaco pole position when a reporter asked the two drivers he had beaten for any advice on the short run down to Sainte Devote.
“So when the lights go out, you wait one second,” Max Verstappen offered with a straight face. “That’s my advice.”
Lewis Hamilton did not miss a beat.
“Yeah, I’m one step behind, so two seconds,” the Ferrari driver added, prompting Antonelli to laugh and nod along.
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The exchange was unscripted and deadpan comedy from two drivers who both stood to gain if the 19-year-old lost time on the launch. Neither cracked. Antonelli grinned back and moved on.
Antonelli was already worrying about the start
The Mercedes rookie has struggled off the line all season and said so in the same press conference. He noted his Montreal launch had cost him only one place, “for the first time I didn’t lose like six or seven places,” and told reporters his Monaco plan was to “get a clean start, don’t try to do the magic start.”
He set a 1:12.051 to take pole by 0.043 seconds from Verstappen, with Hamilton a further two tenths back in third. Charles Leclerc, chasing a home pole on his final Q3 lap, hit the wall at Tabac and stopped at Rascasse, sealing fourth.
The joke landed differently on Sunday
When the five red lights went out, Antonelli did not wait. Verstappen did.
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The Red Bull barely moved as the rest of the grid streamed past. A mechanical problem killed the launch, and Verstappen was pulled in at the end of the opening lap, a race retirement without a competitive lap on the board. Antonelli held the lead through the chaos behind him to take his fifth win in a row.
Asked about it in Barcelona four days later, Antonelli barely kept his own face straight.
“Max, his latest advice was to wait for the red light to go off and wait one second,” he told reporters. “Then unfortunately he had the issue, but that was his latest advice, which was obviously a joke.”
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