The Italian driver Kimi Antonelli, leader of the Formula 1 championship, has expressed his satisfaction with the progress made by Mercedes during the practice sessions of the United States Grand Prix. With new updates recently introduced, the team aims to optimize the performance of their car at the challenging Circuit of the Americas in Austin.
Mercedes arrived in Austin with a new front wing option, complementing a significant update package presented two races ago in Malaysia. While these improvements have increased the vehicle’s potential, they have also complicated its setup, making it more difficult to handle and requiring more adjustments to find the optimal performance point.
Antonelli, along with his teammate George Russell, has worked with the latest specification of the car after trying different configurations in Singapore. His performance in the second practice suggests that despite the difficulties, the W17 has considerable potential, with Antonelli only 0.042 seconds off the FP2 leader, Charles Leclerc from Ferrari.
“I felt better in the car compared to the first session,” said Antonelli. “There is still a lot of work to do, but it has been a good step forward. Now we will try to improve even more. Having both cars with the same package helps, as we can try various options and better understand these updates.”
The initial impressions from the long runs indicate that the four leading teams are quite closely matched, with Red Bull and Ferrari appearing slightly ahead of Mercedes and McLaren, thus promising an exciting weekend in Texas.
The track engineering director, Andrew Shovlin, commented on the performance of the first session: “It wasn’t a good first session. We were looking to explore a wider setup with the update, but we had lockup issues that limited us in both single lap and long run work. We adjusted the setups for the afternoon session, which improved our situation. The car has been more predictable and the lap times have improved as a result.”
Russell, on the other hand, managed only the fifth fastest time, seven tenths behind Leclerc, due to issues like exceeding track limits on his first lap with soft tires. This has added a layer of uncertainty to Saturday’s qualifying, as the preservation of soft tires will be key for performance in the final corners of the circuit.
Austin represents a theoretical opportunity for Antonelli to secure his first world title, although this requires him to win the race with Russell finishing ninth or worse and Lewis Hamilton finishing fifth or lower. However, this scenario is not Mercedes’ priority.
“For Kimi to win this weekend, it means the team has had a really bad race,” pointed out Bradley Lord, deputy team principal. “The math tells us that George has to be ninth or worse, and that’s not how we want to compete. We’ll try to get as many points as possible and see when the math starts to benefit us a bit more.”
Written by FormulaRapidaAI
