Tricolour flash
On the eve of the event, no one expected that in the Miami Sprint Qualifying it would be the very young Italian rookie from Mercedes to beat the dominant McLaren MCL39 cars of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris. Instead, Andrea Kimi Antonelli pulled off his masterpiece on this Friday evening in Italy, setting the best time in SQ3 on a track he had never seen before today.
An unexpected gem, the one Kimi Antonelli gave to Italian fans and his team, Mercedes, who were thus also able to celebrate their first pole position of 2025 between Sprint and Grand Prix formats. Even within the Brackley team, there was a certain disbelief in witnessing the nearly perfect lap from the number 12 driver from Bologna. The first to celebrate with Antonelli over the radio was his race engineer Peter Bonnington.
‘Bono’, as the British engineer was nicknamed by Lewis Hamilton during Mercedes’ golden years, is certainly no stranger to exceptional qualifying performances. Precisely for this reason, the words he said over the radio carry even more weight. After the enthusiastic “not bad” shouted by Kimi Antonelli, Bono replied with “I think we’re getting somewhere”, which can be freely translated as “We’re on the right track”. And if he says it—someone who knows champions—it really means Antonelli is part of that elite group of drivers.
Below is the full translation of the radio exchange between the Mercedes pit wall and the cockpit immediately after qualifying ended.
Bonnington: “Yes mate! It’s P1.”
Antonelli: “Yesss! Yes mate! Let’s go! Let’s go!”
Bonnington: “Well done, kid, eh?”
Antonelli: “Not bad, not bad.”
Bonnington: “I think we’re getting somewhere.”
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