Mercedes F1 team principal Toto Wolff said he believed that the pressures and circumstances of Antonelli’s debut might have been too much for him.

“Clearly here, with everything piling up on him in Monza, that is very difficult to cope with. Is that the reason why he put it in the wall? Maybe,” Wolff said.

“For him, it feels certainly terrible, but it is part of the development curve. What we see is there is performance, and we have even seen that in the few laps we have seen but what he did, the car couldn’t take.

“A strong driver needs to recover from these things, cope with the pressure, but obviously this weekend wasn’t easy for him – you still need to compete in F2, you have all these shenanigans around you in Monza, an Italian kid that is being hyped, first time in a Mercedes car.

“That must be a heavy burden but if he wants to be a champion one day he needs to cope with that, and I’ve no doubt that he can and he will.”

Antonelli, who is also racing in Formula 2 this weekend, said: “Unfortunately it ended quite quickly. It was quite a big one, around 52Gs, and really sorry to the team and George for making them work afterwards.

“Just a mistake by my side, just pushing a bit too much for the conditions. [I] should have built the run a bit more progressively, but lesson learned for next time.

“Not feeling super-well at the moment. Just going to go back and try to rest and focus for the rest of the weekend. There are still some races to go.”

Fellow debutant Franco Colapinto made a solid start for Williams, with the academy driver replacing Logan Sargeant for the rest of the season.