Mercedes admitted responsibility for its ongoing difficulties at race starts involving Andrea Kimi Antonelli and George Russell, with team principal Toto Wolff openly acknowledging that the problem lies within the team rather than the drivers. According to Wolff, the drivers are not being provided with the correct tools to execute strong starts, whether related to clutch control or accurate grip estimation. With McLaren now extremely close in performance, improving race starts has become a critical factor in the fight for victory and the championship.
As the saying goes, not everything that shines is gold. In this case, adapting the metaphor to the team featured in this analysis, it would be more accurate to say that not everything is silver either.
Mercedes has won the first four races of the season, including three victories with Andrea Kimi Antonelli – the latest coming last weekend in Miami – and one win with George Russell. Even though rivals have significantly closed the gap after introducing major upgrade packages in both quantity and quality, the W17, car number 12, has consistently led the field in both qualifying and race pace during key moments of the season.
However, even in the most competitive environments, there is always room for improvement. In Florida as well, the Silver Arrows once again showed that their starting performance is still not fully under control.
While this was not a major issue in the opening rounds in Melbourne and Suzuka, where Mercedes held a clear performance advantage over its rivals under the direction of Toto Wolff, the situation in Miami was significantly different. McLaren, Red Bull, and Ferrari have all closed the gap to the W17, meaning that getting clean and efficient starts – or at least avoiding the poor launches currently being seen – could make a decisive difference in final results.
“It is not good and it is not acceptable for things like this to happen if you want to win a world championship. We need to start well. This is a team issue, not a driver issue. Both cars have lost positions. We have been seeing this for too long, far too long. It is not good enough,” said Toto Wolff, team principal of Mercedes AMG F1.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli was involved in two particularly difficult starts over the Miami weekend. The issue appeared both in Saturday’s Sprint and in the main Sunday race. On Saturday, he suffered heavy rear wheel spin at the launch, while on Sunday the situation improved slightly, although he was still overtaken by Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari and, had it not been for a spin at Turn 2, potentially also by Max Verstappen.
During the five-week break in April, Antonelli even had his steering wheel sent to him by Mercedes so he could train on clutch release procedures and start sequences after struggling significantly in the opening three races of the season. However, the expected improvements did not clearly materialize in performance terms, at least not in a consistent or visible way.
In the Sprint race, Antonelli lost several positions due to a very slow getaway caused by rear tyre wheel spin. At that time, Wolff defended the 19-year-old driver, attributing the issue to a misjudgment by the team regarding track grip levels. In the main race, things improved slightly, but doubts remain that clutch release timing may still not be fully optimized.
“The problem at the start is not Andrea’s,” Toto Wolff confirmed after the Miami Grand Prix. “I think both in the race and in the Sprint it was a team problem. We are not good enough. We are not doing a good enough job to give them the tools they need to start well, whether that is the clutch or the estimation of track grip.”
“We are the only team that has not been able to get this right in the opening races. We need to go deeper into this issue and understand how to fix it, because our advantage over the others is much smaller now. It is not big enough to feel comfortable. We cannot keep starting like this.”
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