Antonelli rewards confidence from Wolff: 'A burden off my shoulders'

Every great driver in Formula 1 was always reminded of that one rain race in a feeder series. In the rain, drivers can make the difference with their driving skills. For example, Max Verstappen impressed at the Norisring in Formula 3 in 2014. That race gave Helmut Marko confidence that Verstappen was ready for the real thing.

After the race, GPblog asked if this victory in the rain was therefore extra special for the Italian: "I think every win means a lot to a driver. Definitely today was a special one because it was my first one. And also it's a track I really like. And yes, and also the conditions were difficult so that makes a special one. The next goal is to try and win one in the dry condition."

Antonelli eventually won the race by eight seconds ahead of Zane Maloney, who finished in P2. What makes that difference even more impressive is the fact that Antonelli tallied those eight seconds in the last five laps of the race. Before that, in fact, there was a safety car. So all those restarts certainly did not make things easy for Antonelli.

Antonelli impresses in the rain

"I mean, we had a lot of race starts. So I was trying to change every time, just trying to surprise my old friend. It was pretty difficult. The race got interrupted because we had the heavy rain and, but at the end, we made everything pretty well and now maybe it's the first win."

Antonelli therefore hopes this result will herald the start of the season. "From Red Bull Ring, we made a big step forward, especially race pace look really good at the Red Bull Ring. We're making improvements and, I'm happy to have won today also, it's important for the team to keep moving forward and improve."

Antonelli's good result certainly did not go unnoticed by Toto Wolff either. The Mercedes team principal pinned his hopes on Antonelli for the future and expressed at Friday's press conference that Antonelli is handling all the attention and pressure on his shoulder very well. The Prema driver was happy with those words.

"This season, I've been under a lot of pressure to be honest. But yes, I have to say today I coped with it, pretty well. Still some improvements [are needed] because sometimes I still do some mistakes. For example, yesterday in qualy, I did a mistake in my lap and lost quite a bit of time. So definitely sometimes I still don't perform as I could and but yes, I'm trying to every time to cope as best as I can with the pressure. And I think today was really the showcase and actually, yes, [it] is a big relief for me, because really takes away a lot of weight from my shoulders and hopefully we can do a good result tomorrow as well."