Williams’ start to the 2024 season has been dismal in terms of performance. So, all Team Principal James Vowles cares about his helping the outfit improve on the track and as such, doesn’t want to pay heed to rumors surrounding Kimi Antonelli’s potential signing.
Antonelli is one of the biggest young talents in racing and is backed by Mercedes. Because of Logan Sargeant’s underperformance, the Italian has been tipped to replace him in just two weeks when F1 visits Imola. Vowles, however, rubbishes these rumors. He talks about how having a world-class driver will not do any good unless their car improves. And for that, he chose Alex Albon as an example.
As quoted by Formula1.com, he said,
“We have far bigger problems to solve than drivers at the moment. Alex has done championship-level drives and at the moment he’s not scoring points and fundamentally we have it on us to improve our car going forward.”
Mercedes will compare Antonelli & Mick Schumacher in F1 test at Silverstone next week.
No plans for early F1 race debut as Toto Wolff doesn’t want Antonelli to get burned. Williams only interested if they can keep him for at least 2 years.
[@tgruener] pic.twitter.com/v7eRCY6Xrl
— Kimi Antonelli Updates (@AndreaKimiNews) May 4, 2024
Williams remains one of the three teams in 2024 to not have scored a single point so far. Albon, who single-handedly helped Williams finish P7 in the standings last season (scoring 27 out of 28 points for the team), is finding it difficult to replicate the same heroics.
At the same time, Sargeant’s misery in F1 continues. This led to rumors of Mercedes forcing Antonelli into the seat, to groom him for the future. Vowles, however, is not in any hurry to make any decisions regarding his driver line-up.
Mixed signals come out of Williams garage
Vowles has previously been apprehensive about giving Antonelli a chance, but that is not because of the 17-year-old’s lack of talent. He is expected to be one of the best in the future, but experience is something he needs before making the jump to F1.
The Williams team principal reminded everyone that a little under a year ago, he was driving in F4. A step up to F1 will be huge and could hamper the young driver’s development. Vowles refrained from making any assessment of Antonelli’s abilities whatsoever.
He explained, “In the case of Kimi, I can’t really adjudicate on the level he’s at.”
Nonetheless, Vowles wants to keep an open mind. He revealed that he is assessing several options to field a line-up in 2025, and although he didn’t admit to it, Antonelli could be one of them (thanks to the latter’s ties with Mercedes).
