McLaren’s early advantage in 2025 has been twofold. It has the quickest car but also has the best balanced line-up on the grid.
Mercedes has shown signs that it could be its most consistent challenger, but having rookie Andrea Kimi Antonelli has always been assumed to be too big a handicap for a teams title tilt.
But just six rounds into the season Antonelli looks like far less a drag on the team’s performance.
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For the first time this year he’s had Russell’s number all day. He’s looked quick out of the box, and not only was he Mercedes’s best performer in sprint qualifying, but he rocketed to a sensational maiden pole ahead of both McLaren drivers.
One result doesn’t make a season — just ask his predecessor, Lewis Hamilton, who won the sprint in China but has been nowhere since.
But with so much upside to the 18-year-old, Mercedes must be wondering how good he could become just this year.
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ANTONELLI BREAKS RECORD TO TAKE SPRINT POLE
We’re six rounds into the season and Antonelli is already justifying his fast-track promotion to Formula 1.
We shouldn’t forget the context of his rise.
The Italian been a member of the Mercedes driver academy since 2018, when he was a junior karting champion.
He moved out of karts and into cars for the first time in 2021, but his first full season wasn’t until 2022 — three years ago.
He won the Italian and German Formula 4 championships in the same season. In 2023 he won the Formula Regional Middle East and Formula Regional European championships in tandem.
With four junior titles in two seasons, Mercedes decided to have him bypass Formula 3 and move straight to Formula 2 last season.
When Lewis Hamilton announced he was leaving the team, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said he knew immediately that he wanted Antonelli to replace him, and by September he’d seen enough progress in F2 to pull the trigger.
Now, just six grands prix into the season, he’s claimed his first major result in Formula 1, beating the fancied McLaren drivers to pole for the Miami sprint.
The rise continues.
“It was a very intense qualifying,” he said. “I felt really good since this morning, and I felt confident going into qualifying.
“The last lap was mighty. I put basically everything together, and it was nice it came very nicely. I’m really happy to get the first [sprint] pole.”
It was a record-breaking achievement, even if the sprint format muddies the history book — sprint pole is not counted as a pole position in the same way a sprint win is not counted along with grand prix wins.
Nonetheless, at 18 years and 250 days old, Antonelli is the youngest driver in Formula 1 history to start from pole — or P1 or the front of the grid — in any format.
The previous record-holder was Sebastian Vettel, who took pole for the 2008 Italian Grand Prix at 21 years and 72 days old.
He’s also the first Italian to start from pole in any format since Giancarlo Fisichella at the 2009 Belgian Grand Prix.
They’re nice details to embellish a strong performance, but there’s little doubt, certainly at Mercedes, that all this will sooner or later become irrelevant in what’s sure to be a long and glittering F1 career. This is just the start.
Kimi pips Oscar to take 1st pole | 01:15
ANTONELLI’S RATE OF IMPROVEMENT PROMISES BIG THINGS
There was an interesting and telling postscript to the garage celebrations following Antonelli’s pole, with TV cameras picking up an interaction between Toto Wolff, his teenage star and Marco Antonelli, Kimi’s father.
“It’s only sprint pole,” Wolff said. “We celebrate it now, it was all super, but now we go back to work.”
It was a comment indicative of the relatively low value given to sprint sessions compared to their grand prix equivalents.
And while this was a significant moment for Antonelli, in the context of his and Mercedes’s season there’s still much to prove.
Antonelli’s advantage over teammate George Russell tells the second part of that story.
While the Italian stormed to top spot, Russell was knocked out of qualifying fifth and off the pace 0.309.
It’s the first time Antonelli has beaten Russell in any qualifying session this season, and it’s a notable gap.
While the time difference is partially attributable to the Briton setting his lap much earlier in SQ3 in a bid to avoid yellow or red flags, he admitted he was simply lacking relative to his teammate.
“I’ve been struggling a little bit today,” he said. “We wanted to go on the early side because ultimately I didn’t quite have that confidence.
“These sprint race weekends are challenging. If you get into the groove early, you can just build from there, and just all day today I haven’t quite felt it in the car. especially the tyres sliding around a bit.
“Obviously disappointing not to be further up the grid, but I’m really happy for [Antonelli].”
The Mercedes car has begun to show some of the inconsistency and unpredictability of last season after starting this year looking assured and reliable.
In that context it’s interesting that Antonelli, not Russell, was able to get the most out of the package.
“Every weekend I’m learning massively,” he told Sky Sports. “I think the last week having a break really helped me to gather all the information and process it all, also recharging a little bit the batteries. It was really good.
“The whole qualifying I was able to make a step lap by lap. Especially also I’m much more aware of how to do a consistent warm-up, how to extract more from the tyre. There’s still a lot to improve, but we’re in a good way.
“Every weekend I’m more confident with the car. I’m able to play with the car more and explore the limit but at the same time understand much better the set-up of the car.
“I can give much better feedback with much more details, and that’s allowed the team as well to improve the car during the weekend.”
Remarkably it’s already too late for him to become the youngest winner in any format — that record belongs to Max Verstappen, who won the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix at 18 years and 228 days old — but ticking that box on Saturday would cement this weekend as a landmark weekend early in his career.
“That’s a big, big target,” he said. “We know the McLarens and Ferrari and also Red Bull, their race pace is really strong, but I think we’re pretty close all together.
“It’s going to be important tomorrow to have a good start and then try to set a good pace without degging too much — and then in qualifying [for the grand prix] trying to do an even better lap.”
Doohan rages at Alpine after mix up | 01:52
McLAREN STILL TARGETING POLE AND VICTORY FOR THE GRAND PRIX
McLaren was the clear favourite heading into sprint qualifying after Oscar Piastri comfortably topped the sole practice session earlier in the day with a 0.356-second margin.
That advantage was a little inflated by the disrupted end to practice, with a red flag preventing some drivers from completing their soft-tyre laps, but generally the gap held in qualifying, with 0.21 seconds between Piastri and the next-best non-McLaren of Max Verstappen.
So how is Antonelli’s come-from-behind sprint pole explicable?
Part of the story is a mistake from Piastri at the final hairpin.
“I’m reasonably happy,” Piastri said. “It wasn’t the best lap ever. I had a lockup into the last corner which I think was probably where pole went away, but P2 is still good result.
“We can still fight form there in the sprint tomorrow. All in all, pretty happy.”
But it’s not as if the margin was massive before that error.
Piastri was just 0.06s ahead of Antonelli at the end of the back straight when he locked up. It was a decisive mistake, but even a perfect lap wouldn’t have guaranteed him top spot.
Norris’s deficit built up more gradually. Despite a strong start to his lap, he lost time to Antonelli pretty much from turn 2 through to the end of the lap but particularly through the high-speed bends of the first sector.
His deficit to Piastri was the inverse, however, the gap between the teammates opening through the slow corners until the Australian’s mistake at the hairpin.
“A close qualifying, but it felt good,” he said. “I’m happy just to get a good lap in there.
“Today’s performance I think was in the ballpark — obviously not good enough, but it shows how close it is, it shows how quick the Mercedes are, with both of us behind.”
Antonelli clearly has the Mercedes in a sweet spot, and in the low-fuel sprint, when the car can be run lower than in a grand prix and when strategy doesn’t come into play, he has a great chance to convert.
But McLaren has its eyes forwards to the grand prix.
“I think we’ve got a bit more pace to unlock,” Piastri said. “I’m feeling positive still.
“I’ll try and make up a spot tomorrow in the sprint before we get stuck into where the big points are.”
“Didn’t get a chance” – Doohan responds | 01:24
DOOHAN BLOW-UP OVER TEAM ERROR AS NEW RUMOUR SWIRLS
Jack Doohan started the weekend in a buoyant mood, beating the rumours and defying the critics that said he’d be pulled from his car after Saudi Arabia to be replaced by cashed-up reserve driver Franco Colapinto.
But that mood quickly soured after a messy sprint qualifying that left him 17th on the grid and a team radio blow-up over what the Australian described as a team mistake.
The problems started from the moment he left his garage, being called into pit lane at the same time as teammate Pierre Gasly, who is ahead of him in the pit lane order.
It forced the Australian to slow to avoid driving into the sister car, which in turn meant he overshot the fast lane and almost collided with the pit wall, forcing him to stop.
By the time his mechanics wheeled him backwards to give him room to manoeuvre, six cars had inserted themselves in the gap between him and Gasly.
It was a crucial delay that meant he ran out of time to complete his out lap and start his final flying lap, guaranteed his elimination in SQ1.
“That’s not acceptable,” he fumed over team radio, and though he received an immediate apology from race engineer Josh Peckett, he continued venting.
“If you’re going to send him [Gasly] before me, you have to make sure he’s ready. I can’t turn out and have to turn in because he’s going to turn into me.
“Then you put me out in Q1. That’s a joke.”
Would Doohan have made it through without the strategy error?
He was around 0.3 seconds slower than teammate Pierre Gasly after the first laps of SQ1. Had he maintained that gap after the second laps, he would’ve been through to SQ2 in 15th — though he suggested there was even more improvement on the table for his final run.
“The first lap was really, really messy, just trying a few things different from practice, and still it wasn’t too bad,” he said. “I think there was a lot more time in the car for the second lap. I guess we’ll never know, though.”
With Gasly eventually knocked out 13th, Doohan can at least console himself with the fact that Alpine is unlikely to be in a points-paying position in the sprint, when only the top eight score — and that he gets another shot at a flying lap later in the day.
“We have another shot at quali tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “The sprint’s going to be a tough one. We just need to learn as much as we can from that for the main race and then focus on the main quali.”
It was unfortunate timing for Doohan, who — as he predicted on Thursday — is subject to yet more speculation about his future with the team.
A rumour emerged overnight that he could be replaced imminently after the CEO of the Argentine state-owned oil company YPF, a Colapinto sponsor, was caught on hot mic saying his driver would be in the car for the next race in Imola, though he later clarified he meant this was only a personal hope rather than inside information.
Alpine principal Oliver Oakes, whose noncommittal language has allowed speculation over Doohan’s future to fester all year, attempted to shut down the new rumour.
“We’ve been pretty open as a team that that’s just noise,” he said. “Jack needs to continue doing a good job, but it’s natural that there’s always speculation there.”
Asked directly if Doohan would be in the car in Imola, he left himself plenty of wriggle room instead of explicitly backing his rookie driver.
“Yeah, as it is today, Jack is our driver along with Pierre,” he said. “We’ve been pretty clear on that. We always evaluate, but today that is the case.”
It all adds up to more pressure on Doohan — on just the seventh race weekend of his career — to pull some big results out of the bag to shore up his future, or at least earn some more definitive language from his team boss.
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