Mercedes explains “unusual” car behaviour behind Kimi Antonelli’s costly Interlagos spin

Novembro 11, 2026 lojamais44@gmail.com

Mercedes deputy team principal Bradley Lord has provided an explanation for several spins that occurred for the Silver Arrows in Formula 1’s Brazilian Grand Prix.

In his first event since his maiden title was confirmed in Mexico, Kimi Antonelli looked set to capitalise on a poor start by polesitter Lando Norris to snatch the lead from second on the grid, building up a comfortable buffer over the first 15 laps of a wet-dry-wet race.

But after changing from worn intermediates to slicks on lap 18, in response to Norris’ stop one lap prior, Antonelli began reporting puzzling suspension issues, feeling like his W17 was pulling to one side. Two laps later Antonelli went off in Turn 1 as his car’s rear end suddenly snapped under braking, spitting Antonelli out into the run-off area.

The Italian recovered but lost the lead to Norris and dropped further down the order to finish fifth, 41 seconds behind Norris. Antonelli’s spin didn’t come in isolation, as he had already gone off at the slippery Turn 12. Meanwhile, team-mate George Russell was fortunate to survive a spin at the narrow pit exit as he rallied to finish ahead of Antonelli in fourth.

“The spin is something I need to look at because I don’t know why I lost the rear so quickly as well,” Antonelli said after his anger over his poor race had subsided thanks to Mercedes clinching the constructors’ title. “Like no warning, nothing. But already when I put on the softs, I felt something weird with the car. So, we need to check what happened but on the other hand yeah, shame because we lost the race there.”

Mercedes clinched its first constructors’ title since 2021

Photo by: Hector Vivas / Formula 1 via Getty Images

After investigating the handling issues both of its drivers experienced, Mercedes believes the handling anomalies they reported were largely down to the difficulties getting the tyres into the right operating window in Sunday’s cooler conditions.

“Kimi obviously had had a spin, flat-spotted all four tyres and so his pace was somewhat limited,” said Lord in the team’s social media debrief. “We did really struggle as we went onto that dry soft tyre and then in the final inter-stint as well, with a car that was very, very tricky to drive, very oversteery and in the soft tyre stint in particular, with very low tyre temperatures.

“That meant both of the drivers, and indeed other drivers in the field, actually thought there was something broken with the car. But looking at it, it looked like we were just below the tyre temperature window, sometimes popping into it, but then dropping back out of it in the damp conditions, and that’s what was causing the very strange and unusual car behaviour.”

Lord added: “It was a really topsy-turvy race. It’s not very often that you spin off on a formation lap and almost make contact with a barrier, that you spin in the pitlane with the other car, that you have several incidents on track as well and nonetheless manage to come home fourth and fifth.

“There were periods of the race in Brazil, the first inter tyre at the start and then during a large part of that dry soft-tyre stint, that we actually were the fastest car on track.”