How “stressed” Antonelli beat his nerves – and Leclerc – in British GP qualifying

In qualifying for the British Grand Prix, Kimi Antonelli saw off the challenge of his Mercedes team-mate George Russell as well as the Ferraris of Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton on a day when the fluctuating wind gusting across the former airfield at Silverstone made outcomes unpredictable.

On Friday Hamilton had trumped Antonelli for pole position for the sprint race by 0.011s, much to the delight of the home crowd, but the Mercedes’ slightly superior race pace had told once the yo-yoing had ceased on Saturday lunchtime. As the wind began to gust and shift direction more capriciously during the afternoon it made for a nervy qualifying session for the grand prix itself – but one in which a mildly surprising contender for pole emerged.

Leclerc has been somewhat overshadowed by the resurgent Hamilton of late and that form seemed to be continuing as he finished fifth in the sprint, nearly 10s in arrears of the other Ferrari. But between the sessions he found something which helped him regain his mojo – and he timed his peak perfectly, finding a huge chunk of time between his first and second runs in Q3.

Leclerc’s first Q3 lap of 1m28.620s was quickly surpassed by Hamilton (1m28.591), then Antonelli (1m28.385s) and Russell (1m28.481s). Provisional pole by a gap of that smaller margin was always going to be vulnerable given the way the track conditions ramp up at the end of Q3, though the wind was a randomising factor – as was the Mercedes’ confidence-sapping penchant for occasionally locking its front wheels.

The true picture of the gap between Mercedes and Ferrari was also muddied by a peculiar quirk observed in sprint qualifying , where both Merc drivers lifted off the throttle slightly before the timing line. Antonelli had alluded to “leaving a little on the table” then; given the way the balance shifted through the lap, owing to different electrical deployment strategies, that 0.011s in well within the noise of a throttle lift.

But why lift at all? The reasons are complicated, and pertain to a change in the absurdly convoluted regulations governing the rate at which electrical deployment must ramp down at the end of a qualifying lap. At the beginning of the season Mercedes and Red Bull exploited a loophole enabling them to run at full power for longer, but this was closed off in the package of changes implemented after the Japanese Grand Prix.

At Silverstone the distance between Club, the final corner, and the timing line is relatively short, so there is a benefit to not being in the ramp-down phase of 50 kilowatts per second. The current wording of the regulations enables the drivers to run at full power through the final corners provided they lift off before the battery is fully depleted.

In this case, it’s a matter of crunching the numbers to ensure the trade-off between time gained running at full power and time lost by lifting off works in your favour. So, with other teams wise to this trick, all the more reason to lay everything on the line for the final Q3 run.

Perhaps mindful of this, Mercedes sent Antonelli out first.

Antonelli goes slower through sector one

Antonelli versus Leclerc in sector one

Leclerc got the upper hand through the opening sector of the lap in a way which points to the Ferrari’s apparent superiority through slow and medium-speed corners. It was a small margin – 28.292s compared with Antonelli’s 28.348s – but a more significant improvement over his first run (28.325s) than Kimi’s (28.398s).

It’s a slightly fiddly sector, with the fast sweepers of Abbey and Farm giving way to the slower Village and The Loop, where it’s easy to get greedy on entry and pay the price in the form of gloopy understeer and lost momentum. Tellingly, our data trace shows Antonelli (blue line) enjoyed a higher top speed on the front straight, but then both cars exhibited signs of super clipping through Farm since they shed speed at a similar rate while still at full throttle.

Leclerc (red line) was fractionally later off the throttle and onto the brakes at Village, deploying his usual technique of overlapping the two to help the car turn. And his precision was rewarded not only with a marginally higher apex speed, but also with a shorter line to the apex of The Loop – and it’s here where he decisively inverted his small deficit to Antonelli in his favour.

The Loop is an outlier at Silverstone, long and slow, demanding patience before booting the throttle to set up the neatest line through Aintree and onto the Wellington Straight. Here Leclerc bolstered his advantage by being earlier and more decisive on the throttle, a margin Antonelli wasn’t able to fully claw back through the Mercedes’ superior deployment once the car was straightened up. 

Antonelli gets back on top in sector two

Antonelli versus Leclerc in sector two

Sector two ends shortly before the braking area for Brooklands, and both drivers briefly super clipped before the entry – clear via both the onboard TV footage and the data traces, where the revs drop despite running at full throttle in a constant gear. By this point the Mercedes was travelling faster and the relative gap to Leclerc’s subsequent lap was diminishing – only to open out again between Brooklands and Luffield as the Ferrari’s superior poise enabled Leclerc to ask more of it through this left-right sweep.

In sprint qualifying Hamilton’s higher boost level through Woodcote gave him a decisively higher top speed than Antonelli, but here Leclerc’s Ferrari and the Mercedes were relatively even in the final Q3 runs. Antonelli was fractionally faster along the old start-finish straight, but only by a couple of kilometres per hour.

Both stayed flat out through Copse, with another brief super clip before entering F1’s holiest of holies, the Maggotts-Becketts-Chapel complex. Again, the Ferrari’s poise told through the opening sweepers.

But then, with an earlier dab of the brakes before the tighter right-hander at Becketts, Antonelli maintained a higher apex speed which inverted the laptime delta in his favour – and, in combination with a better punch out of Chapel onto the Hangar Straight. 35.614s for Leclerc was better than his previous S2 time of 35.828s, but Antonelli had also improved (from 35.541s to 35.521s).

Stowe is the key to sector three

Antonelli versus Leclerc in sector three

Antonelli enjoyed a crucial handful of kilometres per hour of top speed all the way to the braking area at Stowe, giving him over a tenth of a second in hand over Leclerc, but he was also able to release the brake much earlier – perhaps as a consequence of not using the overlap of brake and throttle to turn the car. That permitted him to carry in the region of 10km/h more for a transient period after the apex as he drifted out towards the exit kerb.

The data suggests Leclerc had more boost available to him on the run between Stowe and Vale, where again the Ferrari’s slow-corner nimbleness enabled him to nibble away at the Mercedes’ advantage. But then Antonelli enjoyed better deployment through Club, to the tune of 10km/h before lifting off fractionally before the timing line.

The final sector was another greatly improved one for Leclerc – from 24.467s to 24.380s – but Antonelli’s 24.242s was faster still. 1m28.111s versus 1m28.286s, an overall deficit for Ferrari of 0.175s. Still, it was a timely boost for Charles.

“My driving style is quite aggressive, which seemed to work quite well at the beginning of the year,” he said afterwards. “But recently, for one reason or another, it was just incredibly difficult to put things together. It's true also that we've had two, three races where I was struggling with also some particulars on the car.

“But even since then, it was just very difficult. It wasn't coming as easy – that’s not the word, because it's never easy – but as natural as it should in qualifying. But today we did quite a few changes from yesterday's sprint qualifying and sprint race and I felt more at ease.”

For Antonelli it was a case of exorcising his jitters at going out first on track for the final run, and trying to keep it neat through that first sector. “I'm not a fan of going first for the last run, I was a little bit stressed in the out lap,” he said. “But then just tried to focus on what I had to do and, yeah, luckily it worked out.

“It was a very tidy lap – a lap where I put everything together. Maybe sector one, I struggled a little bit throughout the session. I was a bit inconsistent there. But sectors two and three I felt very good.”