Until then Wolff had largely been Antonelli’s cheerleader in public, doing everything he could to cultivate the young driver’s confidence and ease, both of which are needed for driving at 200 mph and for navigating a relentless spotlight. Wolff suddenly became the disciplinarian. “Kimi, concentrate on the driving, please, and not on the radio, moaning,” he responded at one point. At the end of the race, with Antonelli still complaining, Wolff shut him down. “Now is the fourth time to talk about this,” he said. “We talk about this internally and not on the radio, okay?”
After the sprint race, Antonelli debriefed with the team and hashed out the situation with his friends and family. He watched a movie in his hotel room. “When I woke up the next morning, I was feeling good,” he says. “Mentally, I was in a good place, and I was ready to go.”
When Antonelli fully emerged from the race haze after the Canadian GP sprint, Wolff gave him and Russell a spiel about the nature of a team, and the weight of working for a brand like Mercedes. Wolff—the only team principal with a significant ownership stake, both head coach and CEO in one—warned Antonelli and Russell about what was on the line: the reputation of one of the biggest brands in the world, and the livelihood of all of its employees. He outlined the expectations.
“The rules are, you can’t expect the other car to give you gifts. Don’t expect the other car to be a gentleman, because he’s fighting against you in a world championship. Expect the car to race you like any other team. You two have to figure out how to race each other,” Wolff recalled explaining to them, before landing on the most critical takeaway: “But you’re not colliding.”
We’re speaking in June, a month after the Canadian fireworks. Antonelli is in Austria, and it’s clear that he’s absorbed the team’s messaging. He’s quick to point out how damaging a Mercedes-on-Mercedes battle can be to the team’s delicate ecosystem and how uninterested he is in making things personal. As someone both hunting and hunted, he is energized by the prospect of tangling with Russell. “We both have a great car and we’re both in a position to fight,” he says. “So we know we’ll clash, and we’ll have to fight for position on track.”
There are 1,696 active players in the NFL; 450 or so in the NBA; 500-plus in the Premier League. Only 22 drivers get to sit behind the wheel of an eight-figure rocket ship covered in stickers that cost millions of dollars, and getting there necessitates access to a rarefied world of equipment, karting tracks, and mechanics, plus the ability to travel—and, crucially, the money to fund it all—from a young age. These things advantage those with racing in their DNA and, accordingly, a family willing to put everything else aside for the long shot chance of a child becoming one of those 22 drivers. No surprise then, that each race features an army of racing dads in the paddock who have molded their sons into future Sennas and Schumachers and Hamiltons.
