Kimi Antonelli takes blame as he reacts to huge F1 practice debut crash

Andrea Kimi Antonelli admits he was “pushing a bit too much” before his F1 practice debut-ending crash at the Italian Grand Prix.

The highly-rated 18-year-old, who is expected to be confirmed as Ferrari-bound Lewis Hamilton’s replacement at Mercedes for 2025 in the coming days, dramatically crashed out of FP1 less than 10 minutes into the session.y

Antonelli was on just his second push lap when he lost control of his Mercedes and spun off at high-speed into the Parabolica barriers. The Italian was unharmed in the incident which brought out the red flags.

Antonelli was due to speak to media after the end of Friday’s running but his commitments were cancelled with Mercedes confirming he had returned to his hotel due to feeling unwell.

“Ah, what a day. First FP1 done,” Antonelli said in a video released by Mercedes. “Unfortunately it ended quite quickly because of the crash. It was quite a big one, around 52Gs.

“Really sorry for the team and George for making them work afterwards. Just a mistake by my side, pushing a bit to much for the conditions. Should have build the run up more progressively, but definitely lesson learned for next time.

“But yeah, still really thankful to the team for making this possible and still great to see all the tifosi out there and to get the first laps with all the drivers on track.

"Not feeling super well at the moment. Just going to go back and try to rest and try to focus for the rest of the weekend because there’s still some races to go and we’re still gonna try and get a good result.”

Earlier on Friday, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff tipped the youngster to bounce back quickly from his accident.

“It’s unfortunate because we had an hour’s running and would have seen some good performances. But that’s what we all said; he’s a rookie, he’s very young,” Wolff told media including Crash.net.

“We’re investing in his future and these moments, they will happen. They will continue to happen next year.

“We’d rather have a problem in slowing him down than making him faster. What we saw from one and a half laps was astonishing.”