There are probably easier ways to embarrass yourself in front of a Formula 1 driver than trying to teach him how to drive. Amelia Dimoldenberg found one anyway.
The presenter found herself sitting next to Mercedes F1 driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli, with a rather ambitious plan for their time together. She was going to teach the 20-year-old how to drive. There was just one obvious problem: Antonelli is an F1 driver. Still, they were on a closed track with a Mercedes road car, and apparently nobody had thought this through enough to stop the lesson before it started.
Antonelli began with the basics. Dimoldenberg got behind the wheel, received a few instructions, and set off. A few seconds later, she was in the gravel.
It Did Not Take Long
Antonelli showed Dimoldenberg the controls and clarified which pedal did what before she even started moving. There was no complicated racing theory, just the basics of getting the car moving and keeping it on the track. That last part proved slightly more difficult.
As soon as she started driving, things got away from her. She accelerated, braked, and sent the car wide toward the edge of the circuit, coming to a stop right at the edge of the gravel. It was not a huge crash, just an inexperienced driver finding the limits of the track almost immediately after taking control, which is not the ideal opening move next to someone who drives Formula 1 cars for a living. Antonelli did not seem particularly bothered. The car was fine, she was fine, and the gravel had done its job, so they carried on. Earlier, the two had tried to get the same car into a donut with Antonelli driving, only for him to point out it was too heavy to spin properly.
Somehow, She Had To Keep Driving
Getting the car out of the gravel was not the end of it. Dimoldenberg got back on track while Antonelli coached her through the lap, encouraging her to use more of the tarmac and take the curbs instead of hugging the middle. She started to get the hang of it, even as he kept reminding her she was running too wide through corners.
The gap in experience was obvious. Antonelli has been driving since he was five, first on his father’s lap in a go kart. Dimoldenberg was just trying to stay off the gravel a second time. At one point she passed along advice from his teammate George Russell, who had told her to “follow the black stuff.” Antonelli agreed, adding his own version: stay on the track, use the curb, don’t be afraid to get a little dirty at the edges. He did not hold her early mistake against her, and the lap wrapped up on a good note before they switched seats.
Then Antonelli Got Behind The Wheel
Watching an F1 driver handle the same car right after an inexperienced driver struggled with it makes the difference obvious fast. Antonelli looked immediately more comfortable. He tried the donut again and again the car proved too heavy to slide the way he wanted, so instead he started throwing it side to side to warm the tires, a habit that makes sense on a real track but felt like a lot more to the person sitting next to him. Dimoldenberg asked him to stop. He carried on. She asked again, and that was about the point the original teacher-and-student arrangement fell apart.
In between the swerving, the conversation drifted to Antonelli’s pre-race routine, which involves music, star jumps, a reaction drill with his trainer, core work, and neck training, along with his rough guesses at corner counts for a few different tracks. Minutes earlier, Dimoldenberg had been the one trying to keep the car on the circuit while he calmly coached her. Now he was sliding it around while she asked him to calm down. Fair enough.
The Same Car Suddenly Looked Very Different
Nothing about the car had changed, and neither had the track or the pedals. The drivers had changed. With Dimoldenberg behind the wheel, every corner was something to think about. With Antonelli driving, the car moved like he had spent his entire life doing exactly this, which, of course, he has.
There is also something funny about watching an F1 driver mess around in a situation with genuinely low stakes. He was not trying to set a lap record. He was warming the tires and attempting donuts in a road car while his passenger asked him to stop, which is a very different picture than watching him attack a real circuit under pressure. It makes the opening moment funnier too: she started the session by finding the gravel, and he ended his turn by making the car move around in ways she clearly did not want it to.
So Much For Teaching An F1 Driver
The idea was simple: put an F1 driver in a road car, let Amelia Dimoldenberg teach him to drive, and see what happens. What happened was a little different. She got a few seconds into the lesson before finding the gravel, and Antonelli then took over and showed exactly why someone who has raced most of his life sees a road car differently than everyone else does.
At least the Mercedes survived, and Dimoldenberg did eventually complete a lap without putting it back in the gravel. So, technically, the lesson was a success. She may not have taught Antonelli much about driving. But she did find the gravel pretty quickly.
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