Formula 1 News: 2024 Italian GP Friday Press Conference

Three Formula 1 Team Principals met with the media at Monza Friday ahead of the 2024 Italian GP. Toto Wolff had to answer questions about Kimi Antonelli’s crash in Practice 1.

TEAM REPRESENTATIVES

Peter BAYER (RB)

Frédéric VASSEUR (Ferrari)

Toto WOLFF (Mercedes)

Q: Toto, let’s start with you. Not the start that Kimi Antonelli wanted in Formula 1, not the start that Mercedes wanted to this weekend. Can we get, first of all, your thoughts on his accident and perhaps start by telling us, is he OK?
Toto WOLFF: Yeah, most importantly, he’s OK, because the crash was 45G, so that’s important. Second priority is to get the car ready for George, so the program doesn’t suffer too much, which hopefully is going to be OK. We may run a little bit late, but it’s going to be OK. And the third one, yeah, it’s unfortunate, because I guess having had an hour to run, we would have seen some good performances. But that’s what we always said: he’s a rookie, he’s very young, we are prepared to invest into his future and these moments, they will happen and they will continue to happen next year. But there will also be a lot of highlights. And I think what we’ve seen today was…. We’d rather have a problem in slowing him down than making him faster. Because what we’ve seen from one and a half laps is just astonishing.

Q: His first run was very, very quick. What was he saying to you guys when he got back to the garage after that?
TW: Well, he apologized, first of all, and I think this is what you need to do when you bring a car back that looks a little bit like a Lego box falling on the floor. But also he said that the car, he felt so much confidence, the car was good. And I guess he was just bitten. Everybody suffered from lots of temperature and especially rear temperature out of a Ascari with these kinds of speeds and that’s why the rear went away stepped out.

Q: When is Kimi’s next run in the car?
TW: We haven’t completely decided yet, but I think Mexico.

Q: Now given what happened here at Monza, are you tempted to bring that FP1 forward just so that he can bury this bad memory?
TW: No, I think a strong driver needs to recover from these things and cope with the pressure. And obviously this weekend wasn’t easy for him because he still needs to compete in F2. You have all these shenanigans around you in Monza – Italian kid that’s being hyped for the first time in a Mercedes. And that must be a heavy burden. If he wants to be a champion one day, he needs to cope with that, and I have no doubt that he can and he will.

Q: Toto, you’ve yet to tell us who George Russell’s teammate is going to be next year. Will what happened today have any bearing?
TW: No, zero effect. I think most important is to hire based on ability. And an FP1 that’s gone wrong is not the reason why you decide for or against the driver.

Q: OK, just one quick question on performance. Zandvoort was difficult. How confident are you of the car’s performance in low-downforce trim?
TW: I can’t really say today because it’s very difficult to judge the performance levels. What we’ve seen is very, very, very high deg, even on the ones that ran the Hard, so it’s difficult at that stage to judge. I think we need a second free practice session and see how this pans out.

Q: Toto, thank you for that. Fred, let’s come to you now. Talking of performance, it looks like Ferrari has hit the ground running here at Monza. Is that your take on FP1?
Frédéric VASSEUR: Not really, because I think we don’t have to draw any conclusion after FP1. It’s like this, the last four or five events, that it’s so tight that you have to avoid to do this kind of comment. But overall, it went pretty well for us. We are focused on ourselves, that we have a program for the two days and we will stick to the program. But so far, so good, but don’t draw any conclusion for the weekend.

Q: You’ve had a car on the podium at both of the last two events. Is that evidence that you’re starting to find some consistency with this car?
FV: Yeah, but we were on the podium the weekend before also. And we even started from the first row, on the pole position in Spa. But I think what Toto said before is that for very small details, you can do a huge step forward or backwards on the grid or in the pace of the race, because we are all in two tenths. OK, except Lando in Zandvoort! But behind Lando, it was very, very tight. And you have to avoid to draw a conclusion on the pace overall or whatever that this can change from a weekend to another weekend or even from a session to the session. In Spa, you had Red Bull dominating FP1, McLaren FP2. We did the pole on Saturday. Mercedes won the race on Sunday. It means that we have to keep this in mind and just to be focused on your job and to avoid to conclude too quickly.

Q: Fred, you talk about details. You’re running some upgrades on the car this weekend. What are you hoping to achieve with them?
FV: To be a bit faster.

Q: And more consistent?
FV: Yeah, consistency. More seriously, consistency was not the issue on the long stint. I think we did a huge step forward compared to 12 months ago on this. For sure, we are all looking after consistency from session to session or from event to event. But we are also in the situation that we are developing this car now for three years or four years. It’s becoming more and more difficult to bring performance to the car and we have to take a bit more risk on this and sometimes it’s paying off, sometimes a bit less.

Q: How do you see the championship situation? You’re 64 points behind Red Bull. Do you see that as game on?
FV: I didn’t pay attention to the championship, and I won’t pay attention to the championship. I think we just have to do a good job to do the best every single weekend, and if something has to come, it will come. But the worst, I think, would be to be focused on the championship, to be conservative, to do this kind of approach, because on the same weekend, for details, you can move from P1-2 to 7-8, for strategy, for tire management, for whatever the reasons. And this can change massively from one weekend to another one. A good weekend, it’s 43 points. Soon we’ll have weekends with the Sprint race. It means that you can score 55 points a weekend. I think we have still something like 500 points on the table.

Q: Alright, Fred, thank you very much. Now, Peter, coming to you, we’ve talked about upgrades at Ferrari. You’re running some new bits on your car this weekend, I think just with Yuki. What can you tell us?
Peter BAYER: As my colleagues said, it’s interesting to see that these upgrades usually work from an aerodynamic perspective, but then often they have an impact on the balance and that’s why we’re trying a couple of new bits on Yuki’s car – floor, a small bit on the halo and also the rear view mirrors. And in the end, it’s very early days, and they’re analyzing the data now. But as Fred said, it’s like taking these small steps now because we’re all operating on the top of the pyramid. And if we, especially in the midfield, if we don’t get a perfect weekend together, then the other guys will obviously be right there. And Williams has done a very good job over the last couple of weeks. Alpine is there, so it’s going to be a tight fight until the very end.

Q: When you look back at Zandvoort last weekend, what were the issues with the car? Because it was a challenging one for the team.
PB: Well, it probably was not our best weekend. At the same time, Yuki was nine hundredths of Q3. Daniel had a quite good race on Sunday in terms of pace. And I said, you know, it’s not one single element. It’s really, you know, it’s a, you know, you’re starting off with the strategy. You know, one thing on the top of my head and you’re having set up issues, you’re having, you know, We didn’t have a lot of data because we had a lot of rain, then we had Logan’s crash, and so we basically, perhaps as a smaller team, were not having the tools available like these two guys have. And so we’re walking into the weekend, a weekend like Zandvoort, we were a bit blind, certainly on one eye, and that makes it very challenging for us.

Q: And while we talk about Yuki, he has a new race engineer this weekend. How were they gelling in FP1?
PB: Very good. They know each other since a while. Ernesto [Desiderio] is with us since more than a year. It’s part of the overall plan that Laurent has in place to develop the team on the sporting side, on the technical side. I guess I can present it as double good news because we’re developing talent internally. Ernesto will take over the race engineer for Yuki position and Mattia [Spini] is moving up internally. and so yeah happy with the development and how the team is growing. You know, we had other people joining us recently. Tim Goss will start in October, so we’re making good progress on the team side.

QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

Q: (Christian Menath – Motorsportmagazin.com) A question for Toto. What was the message you gave to Kimi before he jumped in the car? Did you say, ‘just leave the car in one piece’, or did you tell him, ‘go out and show them that you can be the next Max Verstappen’?
TW: Fred said, full push! I told him to enjoy it. I think he has a lot of natural ability and the important thing is to not forget that this is the best job in the world…
FV: The best job in the world is yours.
TW: Yeah, you think? And I said to him also to take the pressure off. We live in our micro-bubble here. Nobody’s interested in FP1 anyway. Whatever happens, happens. And we just get on with things. And I told him the same after the session.

Q: (Diletta Colombo – Auto Moto) A question for Fred. Carlos said that he doesn’t rule out racing for Ferrari again. Would you like to work with him again in the future?
FV: Yeah, for sure. Honestly, I have a huge respect for Carlos and what he did for Ferrari. As you know, this call was not an easy one. But he’s doing a very good job. He was able to stay professional in these tough conditions. I can see perfectly what he’s bringing to the team, what he brought to the team last year. and he was part of the recovery last year when we had a tough momentum in the summer and I’m more than pleased to have Carlos and I will keep a very good relationship with him.

Q: (Adam Cooper – Adam Cooper F1) For all three of you, the SAC are discussing the rookie sprint race plan next week. What are your thoughts on the idea? What are the challenges? Can those challenges be overcome realistically to have it this year? And will the FIA and F1 agree on everything?
Q: A sprint race after the last Grand Prix in Abu Dhabi. Toto?
TW: Well, we discussed it in the F1 Commission and I think we’re keen in giving rookie drivers more opportunity. The stretch is that if you give it to them on a Grand Prix race weekend, it’s going to impact the main drivers, or it could impact the main drivers’ performances. If you let them race on a main weekend, it could influence the race result, which could be pretty damaging if you’re fighting for a championship. So we really didn’t find another way of letting them go through this whole sequence of a race weekend, pushing the car, being able to make comparisons. Because with a day of racing in Abu Dhabi, they’re all going to be on the same fuel. They’re all going to be on the same tyre. And it will be interesting to see how they compare in those respective cars. And the season is finished. It’s going to be a strain for the team, obviously, because we have another day. But we are in the entertainment industry and that’s the best idea so far that we have come up to give them more driving time.

Q: So just to be clear, you support the idea?
TW: Yeah, I think there was no one in the room that didn’t support the idea because we have all the same objectives. We want to give them more exposure, we want to give them running time and that is where we landed.

Q: Thank you. Fred?
FV: Yeah, with the current regulation and the three days of testing that you have during the winter, it’s not easy to give them mileage. On the top, we were thinking to give them the opportunity to do more FP1, but they are doing already 14 races in F2. On the top of this, we have the Sprint races where you can’t give the FP1. Plus some tracks, it’s not easy. We will never give up the FP1 in Singapore or Monaco or Baku. It means that At the end of the day, we don’t have so many opportunities to give them the opportunity to test the car in the real condition and outside of the TPC system. And I think this opportunity could be a good one to also to give them the full weekend with a free practice quality and start. And so for sure, it’s not easy to organize and so, but I’m supportive.
PB: Yeah, very much the same. I think if you see today how well the single-seater pyramid is working from karting, Formula 4, 3, 2, how much talent is coming up. And obviously at the top there’s only 20 seats, so it’s quite complex for these guys to show their skills and at the same time FP1… I mean, as Toto just said, we had Kimi in his first FP1, there is huge expectation, everybody’s watching it. You actually don’t know on what tyre he will go out. Sometimes there’s an accident, like last week, and then they get five minute time to run. So I think it would be great also because you know we would reach out to the younger fan base which is something that you know we’re keen to do and overall we would be certainly supportive.

Q: (Christian Nimmervoll – Motorsport-total.com) A question to Toto. There was an interesting mini-moment before when describing Kimi’s performance and you wanted to say ‘mind-blowing’ but then you changed your mind and said ‘astonishing’. Are you consciously trying to tone it down when it comes to Kimi’s performances and do you in a way feel a little bit guilty with the comments you said earlier about putting too much pressure on him?
TW: I think the circumstances are guilty. In our industry we perfectly understand who is capable and not. And I think how it’s all panned out here, he’s jumped F3, he’s pretty much won everything beforehand then it’s clear you start to become a Mercedes driver, you test in FP1, and at the same time you’re under the magnifying glass because it all happens in Monza. And it has been a while that an Italian driver was in a top team. So I’m sure that this can be a lot for an 18-year-old. But as I said before, you know, he needs to swim. And these days that are so difficult, like it is for him at the moment, it feels certainly terrible. And that’s part of the development curve. And, you know, I don’t want to be the one who picks out great moments and say, well, did you see that sector? Did you see that lap time? Or we could have been third or first or whatever. But what we see is, and that’s why I chose the word differently, what we see is there’s performance. And we’ve even seen that in the few laps that we’ve seen, but what he tried to do, the car can’t take.

Q: (Ian Parkes – New York Times) Another question to you, Toto. It was only very recently that Kimi honestly said himself that perhaps he might not quite be ready yet for Formula 1, that perhaps, arguably, he needed more time in F2. Whilst you said today has zero impact on your decision, does Kimi perhaps have a point that maybe he’s not quite ready as you think he is?
TW: Well, it’s good that you’re not overconfident that you put yourself in into question that you ask yourself that important question and at the end it’s the team that takes the decisions whether to hire a driver or not and who to put in FP1 and not. We are running fully conscious into these driver decisions, fully conscious of what can happen, what to expect and managing the expectations. And clearly here with everything piling up on him in Monza, That’s very difficult to cope with. Is that the reason why he put it in the wall? Maybe. I look at driving performance. Like I said before, I’d rather slow somebody down than make him fast, because the second one is impossible.

Q: (Sara Colombo – Il Cittadino di Monza e Brianza) My question is for all of you. So, as you might know, Autodromo di Monza has been renewed in the past few months. So the track has been renewed and the facilities also has some works to do ahead to renew the contract with Formula 1. My first question is what do you think about the track and the new facilities? And the other question is how do you feel about the possibility that a historical track such as Monza cannot be… There is the possibility that Monza will not be in the calendar of Formula 1  in the future because it still hasn’t a contract signed?
FV: Yeah, honestly, I really appreciate the effort made by the circuit on the infrastructure and even on the resurfacing of the tarmac and so that it’s a good step forward for sure. It’s not the end, but it’s never the end that the track are improving everywhere. And I think Monza is in the same mood and it’s good for the show. It’s good for the F1, good for the fans. And I’m not scared at all that they won’t leave the calendar.
PB: Yeah, I mean, there was some discussions on the track evolution, the curbs mainly, what I heard from at least our drivers, and they felt that perhaps it does something to the character, but I think that, as Toto said, that’s a bit microcosmos. Globally, Monza is the temple of speed. It’s a legendary track, and we are very grateful for the job the organizers are doing here. And as for the calendar, same with Fred, I think they certainly deserve a place but ultimately it’s a decision of Formula 1 and Stefano and the team and I’m sure that he will make the right one.
TW: Yeah, not much to add. This is a fantastic place, one of the best racetracks in the world. The tifosi, this is unseen in any other track in the calendar, and that gives it a special spirit. But at the end, it’s Stefano’s decision. I’m sure that Monza has all his support, he just lives on the other side of the road, so it’s a short way for him into the paddock. But there is a commercial reality also, and I don’t think that any of us can judge where that is.

Q: (Ludo van Denderen – GPBlog.com) Toto, James Vowles chose not to go with Mick Schumacher. He also said this morning that one of the reasons was Mick is a good driver, but not a special one. What are your comments on that?
TW: You know, I know James in such a long time and he’s a bright mind and he finds his feet in the team principal’s role. And I think, you know, he will have chosen his words. Mick is someone that has won pretty much everything. F4, F3, F2. He’s been, I guess, crushed in the Haas environment at that stage. And we have not seen it. But every team needs to take his own decisions. And for the best interest of the team, and then also to decide how it wants to talk about their drivers in the media. And so everybody needs to do this in a way that they think is good.

Q: (Filippo Castano – Radio Azzurra FM) I have a question for all of you. I want to take a deeper dive into what my colleague said before of the new evolution of the track, new kerbs, especially Ascari, the new Prima Variante, new tarmac. Have you got any feedback from your drivers about maybe more places to attack or to follow closer? Maybe other drivers to maybe bring an attack into the Parabolica, sort of fighting more or giving more interesting, more exciting race craft here now?
TW: I think there is detail that matters for a track and I think yesterday we’ve heard comments that the curbs were an integral part of what Monza stands for and I think that is certainly true because getting the balance right between the curb, the small tarmac band that existed, that was a challenge and now the curbs have been changed. I haven’t heard from George or Lewis that that took a lot of fun away. What we discussed in the session is that probably Ascari is going to be one corner and not three anymore. So that’s going to go pretty fast.
FV: I think at the end of the weekend, nobody will speak about it, that the philosophy of the track didn’t change. It’s the highest speed track of the season. For sure, some corners will change marginally, like Ascari, because it will be probably a bit more flat out. But at the end of the day, it’s the same for everybody. We are there to compete and to fight, and kerbs are the same for everybody, and I don’t care.
PB: I heard one comment from both guys during the session saying that there’s still a lot more to come driving-wise, so I think we can look forward to an exciting weekend with great racing.

Q: (Alejandro Alonso Lopez – DiarioMotor.com) A question for Toto. Kimi has been doing several TPC tests. What would you say have been the highlights of those sessions that have shown his progress and that we have been able to witness?
TW: Certainly his raw speed that is there. He’s able to sit in the car and then put in quick laps. The tire management is a work in progress and is a learning curve. So that is going ahead. So it’s exactly how the objectives that have been set for a 17-year-old to develop and to finally be ready one day to make it into a race car.

Q: Does he remind you of a young George, a young Valtteri? I’m just trying to think of the other young drivers you’ve worked with.
TW: It’s super unfair, actually, to compare drivers between themselves. All the ones that are in Formula 1, most of them are great drivers, and they’re all different. They have a different set of skill sets, and that’s why I wouldn’t want to compare. They’re all unique.

Q: (Nigel Chiu – Sky Sports) Question for Toto. Just looking at the bigger picture over the next 18 months, Toto, we’ve obviously got the 2026 rules, Mercedes could be in a title fight next year and you’ve got a new driver coming on board. On a personal level, how excited are you and do you feel re-energized by what could happen over the next 12 to 18 months?
TW: Do you feel that we lack the energy? No, I’m always energized by what we do. We are so lucky to work in this environment, in this sport, to have the honesty of the stopwatch, and at the same time being at the crossroad between the sport and business, part of a global sport, if not the biggest sport, and growing. So there’s a lot of energy. And certainly from the Mercedes team side, we see an era ending with Lewis. It’s been the longest driver-team pairing that has existed. And we’re embarking on something different and new. And on top of that, like you mentioned, the 2026 regulations where it’s all going to be reset. So, yeah, exciting times.

Q: (Daniel Lloyd – Race Car Engineering) A question for Toto. Next year is the final year of the current regulations. Just wondering, to what extent do you think there’s a risk of putting too much emphasis on 2025 car concepts at the expense of a strong baseline for ‘26?

TW: So the rules permit to develop the ‘26 car only from January onwards, which I think is a good thing that we decided back in the day because it’s going to be the same starting point for everyone. So I guess that most of the team are going to choose a pretty early point of transitioning most of the resource into the new 2026 car. But we’re talking about a couple of months up and down. I think everything is going to fall into place in the first few races and I’m not sure we’re going to see lots of upgrades after the summer.