F1, Bahrain GP: no points for Kimi Antonelli with Mercedes. Still, Kimi once again showed his great growth. The final 11th place finish doesn’t do justice to a race in which, without a few unlucky details and questionable strategic choices, the Italian driver would have finished in 8th place. In his first season in the top category, the 2006-born driver is learning a lot and getting closer to the benchmark set by teammate Russell.
In Bahrain, Kimi had a good start, showing excellent pace from the early stages of the race. Particularly in the first stint, he managed the Soft tire very well right up to the pit stop. One of the key moments of the race for the driver from Bologna was precisely the first pit stop. The performance drop he was experiencing led the British team to bring him in earlier than initially planned.
The Italian stopped two laps after Verstappen, who had overtaken him on track in the meantime. Andrea was then slowed by the poor pace of the reigning world champion on the Hard tires, who was struggling to climb back up the order. The only way to get back ahead was to pull off a textbook overtake, executed perfectly in the snake section of the middle sector with his Mercedes.
The third stint wrecks Mercedes’ strategy
Kimi’s race took a complicated turn in the final part, mainly due to the unexpected arrival of the Safety Car. The Brackley team’s plan was to aim for a three-stop race: Medium, Soft, Soft. This was because they didn’t believe the Hard compound was competitive enough. A questionable choice, considering Verstappen and the two Ferraris also struggled. George Russell, on the other hand, finished the race in second after 24 laps on the Softs.
The team’s strategists should have kept Kimi in 7th place, considering his strong performance, which would have guaranteed points. Same outcome had he followed the original plan to run 15 laps on each of the two Soft sets. The projections placed Antonelli in 8th. Instead, Kimi found himself down in 14th and recovered to 11th, blocked by Oliver Bearman who had strong straight-line speed.
Kimi wanted to try the Hard tire
At the end of the race, over the radio, there was an exchange between Kimi and his race engineer about the possibility of using the Hard tire: “Probably, if we had left the Hard on, we would have finished in the top 8 and in the points.” In response, his engineer Peter Bonnington sounded uncertain.
“It was tough from start to finish, we need to review the strategy with the Hard and the Soft, but it wouldn’t have made a big difference.” This sentence once again shows the difficulty in understanding whether the Hard or Soft tire could offer a clear strategic advantage, and how the late Safety Car ruined the plans.
The final result leaves a bit of a bitter taste: 11th place brings no points, but nonetheless young Kimi Antonelli took another step forward in his growth path, bringing him ever closer to the top drivers in the category. This somewhat questionable strategy will allow him to analyze the race from a new perspective, expanding his technical knowledge for the rest of the season.
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