Kimi Antonelli admits to critical Austrian GP error: 'I just felt a bit tense'

Kimi Antonelli has conceded he "lowered the intensity" too much after a strong start to the Austrian Grand Prix weekend.

That error in judgment meant the Mercedes driver headed into qualifying at the Red Bull Ring feeling "a bit tense", and his grid-setting session failed to live up to the early promise of the weekend in Spielberg.

Ultimately only able to qualify fourth for the 71-lap race, that was predominantly due to another mistake the 19-year-old made, when he incorrectly believed double-waved yellow flags had been flown after Max Verstappen's heavy crash at the end of Q3.

In actuality, it was only a single-waved yellow flag, but Antonelli had already bailed out of his lap, whilst George Russell went on to snatch pole position.

That misunderstanding consigned the Italian to the second row of the grid, but he did not feel his aborted effort would have been enough to better his Mercedes team-mate anyway, despite having had the measure of him up to that point.

"It was a weekend where I started very strong, and I think because of that, I kind of lowered the intensity a bit too much," Antonelli told media, including RacingNews365. "And coming to qualifying, I just felt a bit tense, driving-wise.

"We were still up there, but I felt like I wasn’t driving that well and not as free. Of course, the last lap, it went like that, but I was a tenth behind George, so it probably would have been P2, very close, but P2. Of course, it went like that."

Antonelli's failure to capitalise on his impressive pace cascaded from there, and a messy start to the grand prix denied him the chance to fight for victory.

He twice went off on the first lap, at Turn 1 and Turn 3, respectively, before going wide again at the first corner at the start of Lap 2 for good measure.

But after that, the five-time grand prix winner displayed the levels of performance he had successfully extracted from his W17 on Friday, falling tantalisingly close to beating Verstappen to second in a last-lap dash to the chequered flag.

"And obviously, starting from P4, first lap was really bad for me," he added. "And then I really struggled with brakes, and I just lost a lot of time because I started to make mistakes.

"But then the second stint was a bit better, and then the third stint was really, really strong. The pace was just there, but of course fell a bit short."