Mercedes Director of Strategic Development Simone Resta reflects on the team’s performance in Melbourne. The Italian praised both Russell and Antonelli following a difficult opening F1 Grand Prix for the 2025 season.
In the wake of last weekend’s Australian Grand Prix, eyes are on Mercedes following a strong performance from the German Marque. A podium finish and P4 position for Russell and Antonelli respectively in Australia set the bar high.
Speaking on the team’s Youtube channel, Strategic Development Director Simone Resta praised both drivers. The Italian also noted a boost to morale across the team following the Grand Prix as they aim high for the 2025 season.
“There’s a massive excitement in the team,” he said. “Both on the factory side and trackside and it was a great result. We were worried that McLaren could have been faster but it’s great to be a second force there with both drivers and also with Kimi [Antonelli] for his first race in Formula 1 he’s been doing pretty well.
“An amazing start from him.
“We were worried about [McLaren’s] level of competition and we thought, to be in Australia and fighting with Ferrari and Red Bull for a good spot on the podium. Actually it happened.
“We’ve been able to achieve a podium and to be fourth and to put Ferrari behind in these conditions so it’s a massive boost for our motivation, for everyone working very hard to improve our performance and after a positive test in Bahrain and a great race in Melbourne, we look forward to the China race.”
Reflecting on Saturday’s qualifying, and the team’s decision to run medium tyres in Q1, Resta defended the strategy. He explained that the goal was to save a set of faster soft tyres for later in the session. He also commented on the difficulties which led to a poor qualifying performance from Antonelli, who narrowly missed out on a Q2 showing.
“It was an interesting one,” He explained. “We did analyse all the free practice session data and tried to understand our competitiveness against our competitors. We thought [we had] enough margin to try to qualify Q1 with a set of Medium and to save ourselves one more set for later in the session.
“We assumed with George [Russell] it was possible, then with Kimi [Antonelli] we decided to change the programme and actually [were] quite unlucky because for 9 milliseconds due to damage on the floor we weren’t able to qualify [for Q2].”
When quizzed on Antonelli’s performance over the course of his first Australian Grand Prix weekend, Resta complimented the young Italian’s maturity. While a difficult qualifying session left him with plenty of work to do on Sunday, Antonelli managed a strong recovery.
In a Grand Prix which saw both rookies and experienced drivers caught out by difficult and changeable conditions, Antonelli’s performance was a standout. He slowly worked his way up to the points, and a great call on the timing for inters moved him up to 5th. A late pass on Alex Albon into turn 9 sealed a superb 4th.
“He’s a very young driver, he’s just 18,” He said. “But he’s approached the race in a very mature way. Already starting a bit on the back foot after the quali session like we mentioned before. He did pretty well.
“He was able to start well, not run into problems in the first laps and then step by step build the confidence and start to overtake cars and overtake one by one by one and also was good in all the conditions where it was about managing the safety car or managing the pit stop etc. and yeah we ended up in a very positive way.”
