Mercedes expanded a bit on what transpired in F1 Bahrain GP with George Russell, as they also admit to review strategy call for Andrea Kimi Antonelli.
Having dropped one place for the start of F1 Bahrain GP, Mercedes’ Russell managed to gain on Charles Leclerc to be second ahead of fast starter Lando Norris. On the flipside, Antonelli dropped places at the start after a slightly wide moment when fighting against Pierre Gasly.
He managed to recover places but he was in constant fight against others. His middle stint didn’t work well on the medium tyres which cost him time. But his downer was an out of turn pit stop under the safety car, which happened two laps after he pitted to switch to the soft tyre.
The choice of the tyre wasn’t good either and the re-start contact with Carlos Sainz only dropped him further out of the points. He managed to pick up to be 11th, but couldn’t overtake Oliver Bearman and finished outside the points after a promising qualifying and overall run.
Not just Antonelli but also team boss Toto Wolff admitted that they will have to review their strategy calls. The Austrian expanded on what transpired with Russell. He noted of a brake-by-wire issue. Mercedes is not certain the cause of the issue – if it was due to the troubles at FOM.
But it hurt their running as they feared losing whole dash in the process. The DRS flap did open for a brief period, but the FIA cleared Mercedes of any advantage. For Russell, it was a solid result and he was glad to see the chequered flag, but he doesn’t see himself as a F1 title contender just yet.
Problem, drive –
Russell: “Yeah, it was exceptionally difficult towards the end. I had all sorts of problems with the car. The steering wheel, I was losing all my data and the brake pedal went into a failure mode, so I had to do all these resets. One minute the brakes were working properly, the next they weren’t. I don’t really know how that happened. It was something to do with all these failures we were having. As soon as I saw it opened, I backed off. I lost two tenths of a second. It never happened again throughout. I didn’t actually click the DRS button – I clicked another button and it opened. As I said, I lost a lot more than I gained – I don’t think I even gained anything because it was open for less than a second. So I was pretty pleased when I saw the chequered flag, to be honest.”
Wolff: “The brake-by-wire failed suddenly, and then it took a while to find the settings to kind of reset it. But we did that, and then, to be honest, him managing the system coming in and out while having Norris behind him. It’s just an unbelievable drive, to be honest. What he did today. He secured this podium on top of that. Taking the soft for such a long time was also created between managing and then attacking when he needed to. And I think it’s probably whoever, if you haven’t driven a race car that has a BBW or conventional brake, it’s like on a road car when the power assisted steering fails. [We lost ] the whole lot. And I think on the dash we didn’t have all the things that we expected, and we also feared that we would lose the whole dash, which would have meant no buttons, no wheels to run any of the settings.
“And obviously he had it in the shift lights, and he had it in the back of his mind and it didn’t take his concentration away. We don’t know yet [the cause], probably some wiring looms in the car or maybe it was triggered by the failure in the FOM system and then it caused our system to go a bit bananas. And then imagine you have to adjust between one corner having it and the next one not having it, that was just a very good skill. I am so bad at memory, I can’t remember good drives or bad drivers, I can’t even tell you last few races how the results were. Today it was just an unbelievable drive, considering the car was wounded finishing P2 in front of Norris is just really a great result.”
Result overall, chances –
Russell: “I mean, I’ve not actually had that many P2s to be honest. I’ve had a few P3s, but we did not expect to be anywhere close to McLaren this weekend. Qualifying on the front row was a real surprise. And then seeing Lando right up there on lap one behind me, I thought, ‘He’s going to fly off into the distance here’. Oscar did an amazing job to control the race, but to keep Lando at bay, I was really, really pleased about. It gives a lot of confidence, to be honest. This was the real sort of test for us. We knew that our car likes the cold conditions, and the competitiveness we showed in China and Suzuka was no major surprise. But this was going to be the question mark – here in Bahrain. And we’ve had another strong weekend. So it bodes well for the season.
“I’d love to say so [that I am a contender], but I don’t think we are, to be honest. McLaren are just too dominant right now. I think this is probably going to be their peak performance – what we saw this week in Bahrain. And what we saw in China and Suzuka is probably their worst-case scenario and they still obviously got one victory from those two races. So we’ve got to keep on picking up the points, picking up the pieces. And this weekend we picked up the pieces to get a P2 – and we did it in Melbourne as well to get the P3. I don’t expect this to continue for many races to come, but who knows.”
Wolff: “We would have expected that Bahrain would be one of the difficult ones because of the warm ambient and the very granular rough circuit. And I think at the end, we qualified P2 and P4, we had a car that was able to be solid on the podium and that is better than we expected, so you can call a race a success if you win but in the circumstances one could say it was much better than we expected.”
Strategy on Antonelli side –
Wolff: “Probably Kimi was on the worse end today of everything. The soft obviously went away after pushing it very hard, we put on the medium that he pushed very hard and then we had a choice between a hard or use soft, in my opinion, we have to look at the data if we would have given him the hard and the safety car wouldn’t have come out in an inopportune time, he would have finished in the Top 6 or Top 8. Because all of these factors came together, it is just one of those races that will make him better in long-term.”
Antonelli: “It was a bit confusing, Lap 1 was a bit borderline, I was pushed down to P6 and lost few places, then I was fighting back, I was up to P5 and then we got undercut because I pitted one lap later. And then obviously, I was able to progress…but on the medium, I was really struggling because I pushed a bit too hard on the outlap and first lap, I probably cooked the tyres. I found myself a bit struggling but I was still in decent position, I put the softs then. After two laps the safety car came out, we need to review why made the call to pit again.
“Many others stayed out like Verstappen stayed out, Ocon stayed out, so we need to review why we did that. I didn’t decide. I just asked him if he was sure on the last pit stop to go back in because obviously it was just two laps on the tyre and I didn’t have any new tyre, I put a used soft. Overall, also on my side, I didn’t do everything perfectly, we need to see where I can improve for future. At the same time, it is always easy to go after, so we have to review that why it happened and improve in Jeddah. With Carlos, I saw him at the last moment, luckily I opened the steering wheel because we would have crashed. I don’t know if he just missed the corner or if he just lost it.”
Step made –
Antonelli: “Yeah, qualifying we made a step. Also, I felt much more comfortable to race others, it was much better to overtake and make moves, I felt quite comfortable with it, so definitely there’s positive to take away. Of course it was not what I hoped for because I was aiming for a lot higher.”
Here’s race start: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-bahrain-grand-prix-norris-jumps-up-to-p3-on-the-race-start-as-piastri-leads.1829300366391332176
Here’s how F1 Bahrain GP panned out (includes FIA explanation)
