Mercedes worried after Kimi Antonelli’s engine failure in Spain: “We still don’t know what broke”. Mercedes is investigating the cause of Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s power unit failure.

Kimi Antonelli’s debut
The start of the European season has proven rather disastrous for Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who had delivered significantly convincing results in the early races of the championship. After nearly claiming a podium in his debut in Australia, the Bologna-born driver even secured his first F1 pole position during the Sprint qualifying session at the Miami GP. However, that weekend marked his last points finish to date.

A trio of races to forget
In the first European Grand Prix of the season, and at his home race in Imola, Antonelli was forced to retire his Mercedes due to a throttle issue, marking his first DNF in Formula 1. In the following round in Monaco, a mistake during Q2 qualifying (the same session in which his teammate George Russell stopped due to an electrical fault) left him starting from 15th place. Then in the most recent race in Spain, just as a points finish seemed secured, it slipped away due to an engine failure.

A failure that has sparked concern and anxiety within Mercedes, as admitted by Technical Director James Allison: “We still don’t know what broke in the Power Unit, which has been returned to Brixworth,” he commented. “They’ll dismantle it, find out what failed, and determine the recommendations to apply across the full racing engine pool—not just in our team, but also for our customer teams (McLaren, Williams, and Aston Martin), and hopefully it won’t happen again for the rest of the season.”