Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has revealed that Andrea Kimi Antonelli was “toast” after🅠 inviting his friends and family during last weekend’s Formula 1 race at Imola.

F1 rookie 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Antonelli brought 25 classmates, two teachers and sever🍃al other people from his circle to the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix on 16-18 May as he competed in front of his home crowd for the first time.

While it is common🔯 for drivers to call up their family members to attend races, the 18-year-old w🍎as surrounded by a much bigger group of people at Imola.

The Italian’s actions drew criticism from 1997 F1 champion Jacques Villeneuve, who said F1 drivers sho🌱uldn’t bring “family or friend🌳s to office” as it could serve as a major distraction.

Wolff has now admitted that Antonelli and Mercedes shouldn’t have brought so many people to accompany him at Imola, conceding that it left the young Italian without any en💟ergy to focus on racing.

He🌼 likened the situat▨ion to Antonelli’s high-profile FP1 debut at Monza, which ended with him crashing into the wall at Parabolica.

Toto Wolff defends Kimi Antonelli

“This is a learning process,” said Wolff. “We concluded last year that we made a mistake by exposing him in Monza in his fir꧑st ever running in FP1 to the local crowd and he wanted to perfor🐼m particularly well.

“And then Imola was probably the perfect storm because it's where he lives, it's his home track. School, family, local football club, all the people th🍃at helped throughout his career, everybody wanted to have a little bit of Kimi.

“Even as early as Friday he was just toast. And I spoke to him on Saturday and he said I'm out of energy. It's clear he is young. He wants to sꦗay thank you to everyꦐone who participated [in his career].

“He doesn't want to be unfriendly to🐽 friends, family, fans, all of them. It was also the guidance that I gave him: at a certain stage, you need to be. You need to protect yourself. Hide yourself in the engineering room on Sunday and everyone else comes second.

“All of us together, the family, realised that that was too m🍬uch and this mistake we will not repeat.”

Antonelli himself conceded in the aftermath of the race that his driving was affected at Imola as he 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:“didn’t have as𝓰 much ener﷽gy” as usual.

After qualifying a distant 13th on the grid, he was able to propel himself inside💟 the top 10 but retired due to a throttle issue with 19 laps to run.