Nico Rosberg explains what Kimi Antonelli needs to do if he wants to ‘secure’ Mercedes future

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Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s first season with Mercedes has been challenging, with the 19-year-old Italian failing to score points in two of the last nine events.

At the last round in Zandvoort, Antonelli got caught up in a collision with Charles Leclerc when he tagged the rear of the Ferrari and took him out of the race.

Antonelli was handed two time penalties, one for the collision and another for speeding in the pit lane, which forced him to finish outside of the points.

Mercedes has only contracted Antonelli until the end of 2025, but it is expected to continue with him through 2026. However, Nico Rosberg believes he will need to do one thing to ‘secure’ his position in the main team when speaking on Sky Sports F1 (05:30pm, 06/09).

Nico Rosberg tells Andrea Kimi Antonelli what he must do to ‘secure’ Mercedes 2026 seat

Things got worse for Antonelli at Monza when he spun out during the second Friday practice session, cutting short his learning for the weekend.

Despite the setback, Antonelli managed to recover to seventh on the grid for the race with a lap that was just 0.043s off teammate George Russell. Rosberg believes Antonelli must be more consistent if he wants to secure his place on the grid for the 2026 season.

“Really happy for him, really good catch up from the mess up in second free practice and to be so close to George, this is good. That’s where he needs to be. These are moments he needs to rebuild that confidence, get that positive momentum going, he can do it, he’s got the talent, and it’s all up in his head,” said Rosberg.

“Everybody wants him to do well enough to retain the seat, the whole team wants him to continue, but at the moment, I wouldn’t call it secure. Of course, in terms of communication, it’s confirmed, but he does need to deliver more consistently for it to be secured because in F1, it’s quite a harsh world, unfortunately.”

Kimi Antonelli suffered with lack of confidence during Italian Grand Prix qualifying

Although it was a good session outcome for Antonelli, he put himself under pressure early when he failed to progress on the medium tyre.

Mercedes opted to run both drivers on the medium to save a seat of soft tyres, but Antonelli could not make it out of the drop zone without using the extra set of softs in Q1.

Trackside engineering director, Andrew Shovlin, felt they had more pace to start higher up the field, but conceded that Antonelli struggled with confidence on the soft tyres.

“We are disappointed by finding ourselves starting on the third row as our pace looked more competitive than that in the first two segments of the session,” said Shovlin when speaking in Mercedes press release.

“Sadly, our competitors improved more than ourselves in Q3; George suffered some snaps of oversteer in Turn 11 on both of his laps and Kimi felt a lack of rear grip and therefore confidence on his one new Soft tyre run.”

Russell was initially fourth quickest after the first runs, but dropped down to sixth fastest behind both Ferraris at the chequered flag.