Andrea Kimi Antonelli was frustrated with himself after crashing out of qualifying for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
The championship leader hit the wall at the inside of turn one during Q1. He tried to drive his car back to the pits but his race engineer Peter Bonnington told him to stop as the suspension damage was too extensive for them to repair during the session.Speaking after the session Antonelli said he was caught out by how quickly the grip levels increased at the track during the session.
“The grip was coming up very quickly lap-by-lap,” he told Sky. “Obviously I turned in and suddenly I had a lot more front-end compared to the lap before and I touched the wall.
“So it was mistake from my side. Very unnecessary, to be fair. I’m very mad about it and we’ll try to do better tomorrow.”
Antonelli missed a significant proportion of the first and second practice sessions yesterday due to a hydraulic problem. While Antonelli is set to start tomorrow’s race from 16th on the grid his team mate George Russell claimed pole position for the race.
“The car has been very strong this weekend, so George has been doing incredibly well,” said Antonelli. “We’ll try our best tomorrow to recover as many places as possible.”
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