(Motorsport-Total.com) – Kimi Antonelli defied the attacks from his Mercedes teammate George Russell as well as the Ferraris of Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton – and that on a day when the changeable wind sweeping over the former Silverstone airfield made the results completely unpredictable.
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On Friday, Hamilton had snatched the pole position for the sprint race from Antonelli to the delight of the home crowd by a mere 0.011 seconds. But the slightly superior race pace of the Mercedes paid off as soon as the “jo-jo racing” ended on Saturday noon.
As the wind became gustier in the afternoon and changed direction more unpredictably, this led to a nerve-wracking qualifying for the Grand Prix itself – in which a slightly surprising pole contender emerged.
Charles Leclerc had recently been somewhat in the shadow of the resurgent Hamilton, and this trend seemed to continue as he finished the sprint in fifth – almost ten seconds behind the other Ferrari.
But between the sessions, he found something that helped him regain his momentum. He timed his peak perfectly and found a huge chunk of time between his first and second run in Q3.
Leclerc’s first Q3 lap of 1:28.620 minutes was quickly undercut by Hamilton (1:28.591), then by Antonelli (1:28.385) and Russell (1:28.481). The provisional pole position with such a narrow margin was always vulnerable given the rapidly improving track conditions at the end of Q3.
However, the wind was an unpredictable factor – as was the confidence-reducing quirk of the Mercedes occasionally locking up the front wheels.
Strange behavior of the Mercedes drivers
The true picture of the gap between Mercedes and Ferrari was also clouded by a strange habit observed in the sprint qualifying: Both Mercedes drivers eased off the throttle slightly just before the timing line.
Antonelli had hinted at the time that he had “left a little something on the table.” Given the way the balance shifted during the lap due to different electrical energy strategies, these 0.011 seconds are absolutely within the noise caused by a brief lift.
But why lift off at all? The reasons are complicated and relate to a change in the absurdly convoluted regulations. These govern how quickly the electrical power must be reduced at the end of a qualifying lap.
At the start of the season, Mercedes and Red Bull exploited a loophole that allowed them to run at full power for longer. However, this was closed with the package of changes introduced after the Japanese Grand Prix.
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At Silverstone, the distance between Club, the last corner, and the timing line is relatively short. So it is advantageous not to be in the phase where power is reduced by 50 kilowatts per second.
The current wording of the regulations allows drivers to run at full power through the last corners, provided they lift off before the battery is fully depleted.
In this case, it is a pure calculation to ensure that the compromise between the time gained under full load and the time lost by lifting works in their favor. Now that other teams have also figured out this trick, there was even more reason to go all out in the last Q3 run.
Perhaps with this thought in mind, Mercedes sent Antonelli out first on the track.
Antonelli slower in the first sector
Leclerc took the upper hand in the first sector of the lap – in a way that indicates the apparent superiority of the Ferrari in slow and medium-speed corners. It was a small advantage, 28.292 seconds compared to Antonelli’s 28.348 seconds, but a clearer improvement over his first run (28.325 seconds) than Kimi’s (28.398 seconds).
It is a somewhat tricky sector where the fast corners Abbey and Farm transition into the slower sections Village and The Loop. Here, one tends to be a bit greedy at the corner entry and pays the price in the form of stubborn understeer and lost momentum.
Notably, our data recordings show that Antonelli had a higher top speed on the start-finish straight. However, both cars then showed signs of extreme clipping through Farm, as they lost speed to the same extent despite full throttle.
Leclerc lifted off a fraction of a second later and braked at Village. He applied his usual technique of slightly overlapping braking and throttle to help the car turn in.
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His precision was rewarded not only with a slightly higher minimum speed at the apex but also with a shorter line to the apex of The Loop – and it was exactly here that he decisively turned his small lap time deficit to Antonelli in his favor.
The Loop is an outlier at Silverstone: long and slow. It requires patience before getting on the throttle to prepare the cleanest line through Aintree and onto the Wellington Straight.
Here, Leclerc extended his advantage by getting on the throttle earlier and more decisively – a lead that Antonelli could no longer quite make up with the better power delivery of the Mercedes on the straights once the car was going straight again.
Antonelli regains the lead in the second sector
Sector two begins just before the braking zone for Brooklands, and both drivers experienced slight clipping just before the entry. This was clearly visible both in the onboard footage and in the data curves, where the revs dropped despite full throttle in the same gear.
At this point, the Mercedes was faster, and the relative lead over Leclerc’s following lap shrank – only to grow again between Brooklands and Luffield, as Leclerc could push more thanks to the better balance of the Ferrari in this left-right combination.
In the sprint qualifying, Hamilton’s higher boost level through Woodcote had resulted in a decisively higher top speed than Antonelli. In the final Q3 runs, however, Leclerc’s Ferrari and the Mercedes were relatively equal here. Antonelli was minimally faster on the old start-finish straight, but only by a few kilometers per hour.
Both went full throttle through Copse, followed by another brief clipping before entering the holy grail of Formula 1: the Maggotts-Becketts-Chapel complex. Here too, the stability of the Ferrari in the first fast corners paid off.
But with an earlier, brief tap on the brakes before the tighter right-hander at Becketts, Antonelli maintained a higher speed at the apex. This turned the lap time delta in his favor – combined with a better punch out of Chapel onto the Hangar Straight.
A 35.614 time for Leclerc was better than his previous S2 time (35.828), but Antonelli had also improved (from 35.541 to 35.521 seconds).
Stowe is the key to sector three
Antonelli recorded important km/h more top speed up to the braking zone at Stowe, which gave him a lead of over a tenth of a second over Leclerc. He was also able to release the brakes much earlier – perhaps because he did not steer the car by simultaneously applying brake and throttle. This allowed him to carry about 10 km/h more speed shortly after the apex while drifting out to the outer curb.
The data suggests that Leclerc had more hybrid power available on the way between Stowe and Vale, where the agility of the Ferrari in slow corners again allowed him to nibble away at Antonelli’s lead.
But then Antonelli benefited through Club from better power delivery – in the range of 10 km/h – before he lifted a split second before the timing line.
The last sector was another strongly improved section for Leclerc – from 24.467 to 24.380 seconds – but Antonelli’s 24.242 seconds were even faster. 1:28.111 minutes against 1:28.286 minutes meant a total deficit of 0.175 seconds for Ferrari. Nevertheless, it was a boost for Leclerc at the right time.
“My driving style is quite aggressive, which seemed to work quite well at the beginning of the year,” he said afterwards. “But recently, for one reason or another, it has just been incredibly difficult to get everything right. It is also true that we had two or three races where I struggled with some quirks of the car.”
“But even after that, it was just very difficult. It didn’t come as easily anymore – that’s not the right word, because it’s like easy – but not as naturally as it should be in qualifying. But today we changed quite a bit compared to yesterday’s sprint qualifying and the sprint race, and I felt more comfortable.”
For Antonelli, it was about shaking off the nerves of going out first for the last run and getting the first sector clean.
“I’m not a fan of going out first on the last run, I was a bit stressed on the out-lap,” he admitted. “But then I just focused on what I had to do, and yes, fortunately it worked.”
“It was a very clean lap – a lap where I put everything together. In the first sector, I maybe struggled a bit throughout the session. I was a bit inconsistent there. But in sectors two and three, I felt very good.”
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