Former Formula 1 driver Juan Pablo Montoya believes championship leader Kimi Antonelli must defeat Mercedes team-mate George Russell at the British Grand Prix to assert his authority.
Russell arrives at his home race at Silverstone following his second grand prix victory of the season in Austria. The Briton successfully converted pole position into a race win at the Red Bull Ring, and he will be hoping to replicate this success in front of his home crowd.
Speaking on F1 TV‘s weekend preview broadcast, Montoya argued that the British Grand Prix could provide Russell’s team-mate and current championship leader Antonelli with the opportunity to make a statement.
“Well, what’s interesting is we talk about Antonelli all weekend, but the guy that put that last lap in qualifying was George,” the Colombian explained.
“And the guy who won was George. And the guy who cleaned the race was George, and the guy who got the trophy was George. So yes, Antonelli is unbelievably talented and unbelievably fast, but you can’t count George out because he delivered when it mattered.
“If we didn’t have a yellow flag situation in Austria, he still would have been on pole. I think he would still have been ahead of Kimi. So what if I’m Kimi coming this weekend? This is the place you need to beat George. This is the one you would really hurt.”
George Russell, Mercedes
Photo by: Paul Foster
Montoya also argued that Antonelli seems more comfortable in the Mercedes machinery than his team-mate.
“You look at practice one, Kimi is always there, and George is always trying to find ways, and he’s copying a lot of what Kimi is doing. You look at Austria, I really thought Kimi was going to even start in the back and was going to beat him, but I think George is driving as hard as he needs to drive.
“He drove as hard as he needed to drive in qualifying and beat him, and in the race he did enough to get the job done. You can say he took six seconds, but at the end of the day, George wasn’t worried about Kimi, he was worried about Verstappen, and he just needed to manage that gap and make sure he had enough for the end of the race and he did.”
