‘Attack fully from the start’, that’s the strategy that Kimi Antonelli intends deploying in his debut Formula 1 campaign.

But it’s one that could bite, and hard. A lesson Martin Brundle, Juan Pablo Montoya and other F1 personalities had hoped he would’ve learned 11 minutes into his debut run on the Formula 1 stage.

Attack or caution? The conundrum facing Kimi Antonelli

Setting the scene… Last year, amidst a barrage of rumours that he was to be confirmed as an F1 2025 Mercedes driver, 18-year-old Kimi Antonelli got behind the wheel of the W15 for the first of Mercedes’ two mandatory young driver FP1 outings.

It took place at Monza, Antonelli’s home track and all the eyes of the paddock, the grandstands and the world were focused on him.

The Italian didn’t hold back as he took to the track in George Russell’s car and went purple on his very first flying lap. He was even quicker on his second only to lose control of the through the high-speed Parabolica.

Dropping the rear upon entry, Antonelli spun off the track and through the gravel before slamming into the tyre barrier with a veracity of 52G. Such was the damage, Russell’s start to FP2 was delayed as the mechanics worked to repair the car.

As for Antonelli, out of the car after 11 minutes, he plummeted from P1 to P20 as while his lap time was eye-catching at the start, when compared to the lap time that pace-setter Max Verstappen slowly built towards, he was 2.279s off the pace.

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He had broken, as former Haas team boss Guenther Steiner put it, the golden rule in his very first F1 outing.

“Don’t crash it… If you crash it, you will be remembered as the guy – bracket open, idiot, bracket closed – which crashed the car in his first FP1,” the Italian told the Red Flags podcast of his compatriot.

“If you finish second-last, last, third-last, fifth-last, eleventh in FP1 nobody really cares – everybody will have forgotten where you finished cause nobody cares in FP1 where you finish. So don’t crash it because everybody will remember it.”

Antonelli held up his hand, and vowed to learn something from his Monza crash.

“Just a mistake by my side, just pushing a bit too much for the conditions and I should have built the run a bit more progressively,” he said. “But definitely a lesson learned for next time.”

But apparently it was a lesson that hasn’t stuck if his pre-season comments to sport.de are anything go by.

“I will attack fully from the start, my mindset is to go out on the track and drive for victories,” he told the publication.

“It’s not easy, of course, I’m racing against the best of the best. It takes hard work. Therefore, of course, I will try to learn as much as possible from the beginning. But I’ll attack and push immediately without fear and see what happens then.”

Not exactly the advice Martin Brundle imparted in the immediate aftermath of his Monza crash.

“It was the last thing he or the team needed,” said the former F1 driver turned Sky F1 pundit. “They haven’t got any data, the car is damaged, his confidence will be damaged.

“Mercedes want to present him as a star of the future. He pushed very, very hard early on, he’d just gone purple in the second sector, slightly fractionally ahead of Lewis, and he was expecting too much too soon, obviously, got in and there was not enough grip for the speed that he was carrying.

“It’s such a shame. I admire his confidence, but he needed to play himself in somewhat more carefully than that.”

It’s advice that Juan Pablo Montoya recently reiterated as he looked ahead to Antonelli’s debut campaign, urging the teenager to take the time to learn and not be bullish.

According to the former F1 driver, the latter could see Antonelli complicate matters for himself.

“He might lose his mind at the beginning of the year because he’s no longer racing against [his] team-mates. He had easy times before, but now suddenly he is going against someone who is better than what he has experienced before,” he told the AS Colombia YouTube channel.

“The car is built exactly to what George wants and he is going to have a difficult time.

“If he has the mentality of going out to stay behind George and learn from George and if out of 25 [24] races, in 10 he gets ahead of George, then it’s a good year.

“But, if he wants to go out to dominate George, maybe he will lose his head and the year will become complicated for him.”

Whether Antonelli with his “attack fully” mindset heeds their warnings only time will tell.

It will also be interesting to follow Mercedes’ reactions to their young protege’s on-track antics as Toto Wolff conceded last year that they accept there will be mistakes as Antonelli finds his feet.

“I think we don’t want to slow a driver down,” he said. “We’re happy to work with someone who has so much speed, that has confidence.

“Sometimes that can end up in the wall… I think he just pushed too hard and expected from the car more than it had at that time, and that’s okay.”

Cautious but fast. Acclimatise but attack. On the limit but don’t crash. Simple right? Not. It’s a tightrope that Antonelli will have to learn to walk this season, and it is just one of the many, many lessons he will learn.

And if it does go wrong at some point, and it most likely will, he should take the words of Lewis Hamilton to heart.

“Don’t let the negativity get to you because, you know, people are so negative nowadays judging you non-stop,” was the Briton’s advice to F1’s incoming rookies.

“So stay off social media and keep your family and your closest friends close to you because they are the only ones that are your true friends and they’re going to be there for you when the going gets tough.

“It’s not about this year,” he added. “We’re talking about youngsters. We’re talking about 18-year-olds.

“I think it’s really about giving people, firstly, them getting the opportunity and not knocking them down when they make mistakes.

“Which one of you, or anyone here – 18 years old, 19 years old – has not made mistakes? And it’s just that when you do it in the spotlight, it’s really, really, really tough.

“And so we should be lifting these people up and giving them not just one chance, two chances, just continue to support them and just not slating them because that’s just not nice.”

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