LONDON — Nico Rosberg has warned Andrea Kimi Antonelli that his own mind will be the biggest obstacle to winning a first Formula 1 world championship, even as the Mercedes driver holds a commanding lead in the standings. The 20-year-old Italian leads Mercedes team-mate and direct title rival George Russell by 81 points with nine scheduled races remaining, with Ferrari's Lewis Hamilton 101 points adrift and McLaren's reigning world champion Lando Norris 106 points behind.
"I know how my head started to play games with me when I was the big favourite," Rosberg said on the latest episode of Sky Sports' The F1 Show. "When you're really the big favourite, like he is now, it's like, 'oh my God, this is this is actually mine for the taking. I better not mess this up, I better not make these make stupid mistakes and unnecessary mistakes now because the World Championship is there for the taking'." Rosberg added that fear takes capacity away from concentration, noting it is "so damn difficult to not make mistakes" when driving at the front and qualifying at the limit.
Rosberg drew directly on his own championship-winning experience from 2016, when he prevailed against then Mercedes team-mate Hamilton by just five points following a nail-biting finale in Abu Dhabi before announcing his shock retirement from F1 days later. "When I was going for my World Championship, the last four races, that's when it really went crazy in my head, and there was no chance in the world for me to do a pole position or to win another race in those last four races because I had like 30 per cent less capacity in my mind to actually drive well," Rosberg explained. "Usually, it's like 100 per cent to drive well, and now it was 70 per cent to drive well, and 30 per cent was just absolutely terrified to make some stupid mistake and lose my opportunity to win the Formula 1 World Championship."
The German said the scale of the prize magnifies the pressure, noting Antonelli has been working toward the dream since he was eight years old — 12 years of dedication, more than half his life. "That's the big one that we need to keep an eye out. It's really him against his mind now, so we see how that goes, but he's doing incredibly well," Rosberg said. Antonelli remains the clear favourite to become F1's youngest-ever world champion, a position that comes after George Russell concedes F1 title fight after Spanish GP blow left the Briton facing a steep deficit to his team-mate.