Why Mercedes didn’t expect “Monza 2.0” from Kimi Antonelli in Baku

Setembro 27, 2026 lojamais44@gmail.com

Kimi Antonelli was never going to perform a “Monza 2.0” in Formula 1’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Mercedes deputy team principal Bradley Lord said regarding his driver’s recovery.

Three weeks ago, Antonelli took an engine penalty at the Italian GP and clinched a memorable home victory from 19th on the grid.

This time around, a technical issue cost the Mercedes driver track time in Thursday practice as he completed just 25 laps across the whole day – most of his rivals covered around 45. Then Antonelli hit the Turn 1 inside wall hard enough to terminally damage his car in Q1, ending up 16th on the grid and setting up a tricky race.

The sophomore actually lost a spot on lap one before fighting this way through the field. But unlike at Monza, where he was up to second place by lap 16, Antonelli only reached the top 10 on lap 17 in Baku. He eventually finished fifth, having stayed mostly out of trouble at the safety car restarts.

“You can see today he was a little bit off George’s pace, even when he was running in free air,” Lord pointed out. “And no doubt that’s down, for him, A, to George having an incredibly strong weekend, and, B, just not quite getting the feeling with the car. Obviously he lost that time in FP1, was playing catch-up, and then had the incident in qualifying.

“When you’re really stretching the legs of the car in qualifying, it’s when the drivers really get a feel for how it’s performing and what it’s doing. He was missing those reference points, but I think it was important not to come into the race thinking this is going to be Monza 2.0. It’s Baku, it’s a very different circuit, different overtaking difficulty, different challenges, and he drove the race that was in front of him really well.

Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes

Photo by: Michael Potts / LAT images via Getty Images

“He actually came out of lap one P17. So to finish P5, to have the intuition and the foresight to know that accident was coming at Turn 1 at the restart, and to back out of it so that those other cars took themselves out and he was able to navigate through, albeit with a bit of damage from one of the Haases, showed a really good grasp of the big picture today.

“So I think to get back to P5 – not to make any mistakes as well, that was a big part of it – was a really, really strong recovery drive and a very good sign for the races to come.”

Antonelli indeed was significantly slower than team-mate George Russell, with the most representative moments being the last seven laps before the first safety car and the last eight laps of the race. He was 0.447s down on average in that first period, then 0.619s in the latter – always on similar tyres.

After intriguingly stating that he had “nothing to lose” following his qualifying mishap, which was surprising in light of the championship situation, the youngster eventually decided on a more cautious approach for the race and owned up to ‘driving like his grandmother’.

Might Russell’s third victory of the season, cutting his championship deficit from 81 to 66 points, take a psychological toll on Antonelli, Lord was asked?

“I don’t really think it makes a difference,” the Briton replied. “The drivers are setting themselves their own high standards and they want to perform to those. One of the great assets and the great strengths of this team is we’ve got two drivers who are capable of fighting at the very front, putting the car on pole, delivering flawless race wins, and that’s part of the strength of the team.”