6 days ago
Mercedes 'stung' by George Russell and Kimi Antonelli's disastrous F1 run
George Russell managed 18 points while Kimi Antonelli drew a blank in all three rounds of the Imola, Monaco and Barcelona triple-header, as Mercedes lost ground in the championship
A top Mercedes chief has admitted the team is feeling "pretty stung" by a triple header of Formula 1 races which brought little joy. The first three European races of the 2025 season were difficult for the Silver Arrows who managed to score just 18 points over three Sundays.
All of them were amassed by George Russell, who saw his remarkably consistent start to the campaign slip. He qualified well at Imola but struggled for pace during the race and slipped down to seventh, his worst result of the campaign up to that point.
Things got worse in Monaco as he suffered an engine issue in qualifying and, with overtaking impossible on the tight Monte Carlo streets, couldn't make it into the top 10. He did at least return to the top five in Barcelona, finishing the Spanish Grand Prix fourth despite being rammed by Max Verstappen.
While 18 points would have been a disappointing return to the Brit, it's a number Kimi Antonelli would have loved to bring home. Instead, he failed to score a single point over the course of a hellish triple header for the F1 rookie.
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He too qualified too low to have a chance of making the points in Monaco, and his 18th-placed finish there was sandwiched by two DNFs with Mercedes suffering reliability issues on that car. A throttle issue forced him to pull over at Imola, while his engine gave up in Spain because of an oil pressure problem.
Reflecting on how the triple header went for the team, technical director James Allison said he and his colleagues had "mixed" feelings. He said: "I guess from Barcelona, there were aspects of the way we approached the weekend, of the performance of the car in very hot track conditions that give us some optimism for the future.
"But we're all pretty stung by the DNFs and having been through a triple header where we didn't score at anything like the rate we did in the opening races of the year. So, hopefully, good looking forward, but I wouldn't want to do those three races again like that."
Antonelli, 18, is in his first season on the F1 grid and team principal Toto Wolff has made it clear that it will be little more than a year of learning for a talent who Mercedes hope can go on to be a future superstar. But despite the lower expectations in his maiden campaign, Allison admitted the teenager has been affected by his difficult run.
He said: "Kimi is young and full of all the optimism of youth, but I absolutely know that our failures in this period have taken a few chunks out of Kimi along the way. Two DNFs, one caused by a chassis problem, one caused by a PU problem in just three races – that's a pretty tough pill to swallow.
"Leaving that aside, and Kimi looking in it himself, he will know that he's got more to find. But in amongst that, there's been a lot of very positive work with him and brilliant experience for him running on a very dynamic track like it was in Barcelona, with the track temperatures pushing up towards 50 degrees and managing soft tyres in those conditions. That is just putting experience into him at a very fast rate, and he was handling it pretty well."
