Kimi Antonelli limited the damage for Mercedes in Sepang by qualifying fourth and moving up to third on the Bahrain Grand Prix grid, despite a Q2 track-limits mistake that left him with only one fresh set of Soft tyres for the decisive session. More worrying for Mercedes was the behaviour of the upgraded W17, with Toto Wolff admitting the team encountered understeer, drag and characteristics it had not seen at any previous point this season.
George Russell finished qualifying eighth and will start seventh, while Kimi Antonelli recovered from his earlier mistake to finish more than two tenths ahead of his Mercedes team-mate. The result was respectable, but it did little to remove the questions surrounding the substantial upgrade package introduced at Sepang.
Kimi Antonelli loses a set of Soft tyres after Q2 track-limits mistake
Kimi Antonelli made his own afternoon more difficult in Q2. The Italian exceeded track limits, had a lap time deleted and, more importantly, effectively wasted a set of Soft tyres.
The mistake appeared relatively harmless at first because progressing into Q3 was never seriously in doubt. Its real cost only became apparent during the final phase of qualifying.
With only one fresh set of Soft tyres remaining, Kimi Antonelli had to put everything into a single Q3 attempt, which also came out of sequence compared with his rivals.
There was no opening run to establish references before attacking on the second set. Instead, Kimi Antonelli had one lap and no second opportunity if anything went wrong.
The error remains significant, particularly because it was not the first time a qualifying mistake had complicated Kimi Antonelli’s programme. Toto Wolff did not attempt to hide his frustration.
“It’s not good. You’re in Q2, you know you’re going to get through, and you lose a set of tyres in qualifying this tight, especially when we’re struggling. It’s not good.”
Kimi Antonelli responds with strong final Q3 lap
There was another side to Kimi Antonelli’s afternoon. Once under maximum pressure, the Mercedes driver delivered.
Kimi Antonelli produced a very strong final lap to take fourth position, finishing more than two tenths of a second ahead of George Russell. With a penalty moving both Mercedes drivers forward by one position, Kimi Antonelli will start the race from third place.
The Italian estimated that a cleaner qualifying session could have put him in contention for second, although he did not believe pole position was realistically available.
“Max was a little too fast for us today.”
Kimi Antonelli therefore probably lost only one position compared with Mercedes’ maximum potential. That does not erase the Q2 mistake, but it leaves his personal result looking positive considering the pressure of entering Q3 without a second chance.
Mercedes upgrade raises bigger questions than qualifying result
The more significant concern for Mercedes is the performance of the upgrades introduced at Sepang. The team arrived expecting a meaningful step forward, but the package has so far failed to provide the answers engineers had anticipated.
Unusual behaviour had already appeared on Friday, particularly pronounced understeer that forced Mercedes engineers to make substantial set-up changes in areas that had not required such radical intervention earlier in the season.
Driveability improved considerably between Friday and Saturday, something George Russell also felt behind the wheel, while the performance seen in FP3 generated renewed optimism.
Some of those problems returned during qualifying, however.
“It’s very difficult to understand,” Toto Wolff admitted. “On Friday we were surprised by some behaviours from the car that we had never seen during the year. This morning it seemed that, at least with Kimi, we had made a step forward in understanding it, then in qualifying we went back a little towards what we had seen before. There simply wasn’t performance.”
W17 loses on straights and struggles to rotate in slow corners
Toto Wolff’s assessment highlighted two particularly unusual weaknesses. The Mercedes W17 appeared unexpectedly compromised on the straights while simultaneously struggling to rotate through slower corners.
“It seems like we have a lot of drag, because this is the first time we have lost so much on the straights, especially compared with Max. And in the slow corners we can’t get the car to rotate, there is too much understeer. These are all things we hadn’t seen during the year.”
It is still too early for Mercedes to blame the new upgrade package directly. Sepang presents a distinctive technical challenge, with extremely high temperatures and a highly abrasive surface making it difficult to maintain the tyres inside their ideal operating window.
Kimi Antonelli also stressed that Mercedes still needs to establish whether the unusual behaviour is primarily a consequence of the circuit characteristics or whether something within the new package needs to be corrected.
Toto Wolff: Mercedes expected three tenths but may have gone backwards
Toto Wolff nevertheless acknowledged the scale of the uncertainty surrounding the upgrade.
“We continue to believe that the upgrade works. We just need to understand why it isn’t working here.”
“You expect three tenths to arrive and instead it feels like you have gone backwards by three, four or five. It’s strange.”
The comment summed up Mercedes’ Saturday more effectively than the final classification. Kimi Antonelli will start third and, with significant degradation expected and a race that could feature two or even three pit stops, remains well placed to challenge for a podium and potentially become involved in the fight for victory.
His grid position, however, does not remove Mercedes’ underlying problem.
The team arrived at Sepang expecting an important step forward and instead found a W17 behaving differently from the car it had understood throughout the season. Malaysia’s extreme conditions give the new package some benefit of the doubt, but the track has provided Mercedes with an important warning.
Before determining how much performance the upgrade can ultimately deliver, the engineers at Brackley first need to understand why the W17 has suddenly begun displaying characteristics that had not appeared before this weekend.
Leave a Reply