PALMER: Antonelli’s brilliant Las Vegas drive came at the perfect time for the Mercedes rookie
Former Renault F1 driver Jolyon Palmer breaks down Kimi Antonelli's race weekend under the Las Vegas lights.
Kimi Antonelli’s weekend in Las Vegas was one of his best yet in F1, as he ended up on the podium having started from 17th position on the grid.
It was the kind of measured drive you’d have expected from some of his more experienced front-running rivals. He kept Oscar Piastri at bay late on and even extended his gap over Charles Leclerc to be able to absorb his five-second penalty without a position loss after the flag.
There were still lessons for him over the weekend though. He looked very quick in practice and has often shown this year that prior experience at a circuit is no guarantee of success for him – in fact he’s actually gone better on tracks he has never been to, with limited track time.
Qualifying was tricky though. In a wet session on a track like Vegas there is a lot of mental capacity needed, as well as driving skill. Everyone fuels up for the session in these instances because you can never guarantee which lap will be your last and you can’t afford to miss time sitting in the pits whilst others are improving.
Trying to find some clear space, keeping your tyres in the right window and learning more about the track conditions every single lap is tricky, as well as managing energy levels from the battery.
On a circuit with long straights like Vegas, it’s important to know when your last lap is so you can top the battery up a bit more and deploy energy to give yourself a big advantage on that final attempt. Unfortunately for Kimi, a lock-up on his last lap meant he was left in the lurch as the track was at its best, and alongside Lewis Hamilton he was a shock loser of Q1.
The next error was creeping forward at the race start, which confused both driver and team as they couldn’t see a reason for it. I suspect this is pretty simple though. The track slopes very gently at the back of the grid and you need to apply some brake pressure to stay still in the box.
While Mercedes saw that there was no slip on Kimi’s clutch, it could be that as he applied circa 10,000RPM, the rising revs caused vibrations through the car enough to warrant a bit more brake pressure.
He obviously didn’t feel it from the cockpit and it was such a minor transgression, but the rules are set in stone for start infringements, so a penalty was inevitable here, even if he gained nothing from it.
The rest of his race, though, was brilliant. While team mate George Russell further up the road was struggling a lot with his tyres, Antonelli managed to do almost the entire race on a set of hards and was even one of the fastest cars on the circuit at the end.
The actual wear was low in Vegas. The circuit energy is incredibly low – there aren’t many fast corners to put load through the tyres and the temperatures are also the lowest of the season, so it’s all about getting the tyres into the right window to avoid graining.
This happens when drivers push with tyres that aren’t operating in the correct window and so the rubber moves around and balls up on the surface.
For Russell, he was chasing the race leader and paid a price for challenging too soon in both stints. Antonelli was more conservative for much of his long run, rising through the field as his competitors pitted. After a Lap 2 stop, it seemed inevitable he’d have to pit again, like Yuki Tsunoda, who opted for the same strategy as Kimi. But when the Italian rookie wound up the speed later on, the tyres were still there for him.
On top of that, he ended as one of only three drivers to lap underneath a 1m 34s second lap – along with the top two – underlining his raw pace. We also saw more of that steely composure he showed in Brazil as he kept a determined Oscar Piastri behind him on much fresher tyres.
Kimi has said that he had to really knuckle down this season after his second home race at Monza in September, when Toto Wolff publicly called his performance ‘underwhelming’.
There have probably been a couple of turning points for Antonelli in his topsy-turvy season. The summer break also seemed like a great reset. In Spa and Budapest Kimi looked drained and bereft of confidence – a critical commodity for a successful Formula 1 driver.
But after a couple of weeks of forced time off he was already delivering much better on one-lap pace after the summer, in Zandvoort and Monza, when his Qualifying efforts were much more on par with his team mate.
Sometimes in a blur of a long rookie season, a bit of time to collect your thoughts and have a breather can do a lot of good. When you are struggling, bouncing straight from race to race can be a big mental challenge, and that’s how it looked for Kimi for much of the European season, as he made a litany of errors.
After Monza, it seems he has also managed to find better race pace and execution. He’s now starting to put race weekends together better. We saw that throughout the Brazil Sprint weekend, then in Mexico he was very competitive and beat Russell in a Grand Prix for the first time too, and now he’s backed it all up with a cracking race in a tricky Las Vegas GP.
If he can see out the season in this vein of form, that’ll be a huge boost for F1’s most talked about rookie in years, ahead of a first winter off and a complete reset in the regulations and pecking order next year – which many think could see Mercedes right back in the title hunt.
