It was a very uphill Friday for the Italian driver, mainly due to a power unit issue in the only free practice session and a feeling with the medium tyre that never really clicked during the opening phases of qualifying. However, in SQ3 the soft compound brought the W17 back to life and, with a decisive push lap especially in the high-speed corners, Kimi Antonelli brought Mercedes back into the front row, effectively saving the overall balance of the Silver Arrows’ day.
A qualifying session saved in the very last second, quite literally this time. Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s Friday was a curious rollercoaster, in a day that, beyond a solid race pace, only truly came alive in the final moments of a session that, before SQ3, was offering little satisfaction and was even starting to raise early doubts within the garage.
Undoubtedly, the power unit issue in the only free practice session did not help, as it prevented him from running the softest compound exactly at the moment when everyone else was improving on a track that had already become representative of qualifying conditions. But this is where the most interesting paradox emerged: precisely in the area where George Russell had an extra weapon, Antonelli was instead able to make the difference.
While in the first two qualifying segments on medium tyres the Italian was slightly struggling, partly due to a few minor mistakes and an imperfect balance, in SQ3, once the soft tyres were fitted, the W17 suddenly came alive in his hands, putting Kimi back in contention for the front row. It is often said that a new tyre, especially the softest compound, can either expose problems or hide them.
In Ferrari’s case the soft tyre highlighted issues, but for Antonelli that extra grip completely transformed his qualifying performance, especially in the high-speed sections where he had suffered too much understeer in FP1. Between turn 4 and turn 8, the fast part of the first sector, the Mercedes driver suddenly became one of the fastest on track, if not the outright quickest.
This was a key factor because, in contrast, George Russell struggled throughout Friday with a noticeable lack of grip regardless of compound, with particularly evident difficulties in the fastest corners where the tyre tends to overheat. That is why Antonelli’s step forward in the final segment was so crucial: it effectively repaired what had looked like one of the weakest areas of the W17 during free practice.
Antonelli himself did not hide the fact that the qualifying session was a bit “messy” in the first two segments, due to difficulties extracting grip from the medium compound, which in Miami’s high temperatures tended to slide more and did not provide the support he needed. “It was a bit of a messy session, I struggled quite a lot with my car and on the mediums I couldn’t put together a good lap,” the Italian explained after qualifying second, also helping to stabilise Mercedes’ overall result, with Russell sixth but more than six tenths off the pace and four tenths behind his teammate.
“Then on the softs, everything suddenly came alive and I felt much more comfortable. Obviously it was a shame not to try the softs in Free Practice 1, but I think there was still some margin left.”
Over team radio, immediately after the lap that secured him a front-row start and put him back in a position to fight for Sprint victory, Antonelli described it as a qualifying session where he “limited the damage”, because the sensations after FP1 and the first two qualifying segments were far from encouraging. But this front-row result could genuinely change the course of his Saturday morning, completely reshaping a Friday that until that point had been heading in a very different direction.
During long-run simulations, Mercedes confirmed itself as the fastest team, but the challenge will not only be about performing in the Sprint: the key point will also be the qualifying session on Saturday afternoon, when parc fermé rules are relaxed again, allowing further setup adjustments. In recent races, tyre management over long distances has been one of the W17’s strengths, but it is also true that most of those events were held on relatively cooler circuits, conditions that tended to disadvantage McLaren more than others.
Miami represents a slightly “new” kind of environment, and George Russell was the Mercedes driver who suffered the most from these conditions, while Antonelli managed to limit the damage. “I think, despite everything, it is a decent result. The team did a great job recovering and now we look at tomorrow with optimism. We will definitely review everything tonight and analyse in detail what we can do to go faster tomorrow,” the Italian concluded.
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