Toto Wolff: “If Kimi had gotten stuck there …”

– That was the ultimate humiliation for George Russell and possibly a preliminary decision in the World Championship: Once again, the Brit had to concede defeat to his young teammate Kimi Antonelli, even though the latter, starting from position 19, was actually about to lose some points in the title race.

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But Antonelli showed the statistically second-best comeback in Formula 1 history – only John Watson won from even further back – and won at his home race. Antonelli not only drove like lightning through the field but also beat Russell in a direct duel.

At first, everything seemed to be going according to plan for Russell: The Mercedes driver quickly got rid of the surprise polesitter Pierre Gasly and took the lead. But he soon had to realize that Antonelli was not as far away as he thought. “When I saw that he had already moved up to P5 after just a few laps, I thought: Okay, he’s really mixing it up here,” he says.

That was already after just ten laps. Only three laps later, the Italian was right on Russell’s tail while he was battling Max Verstappen. And when both had left the four-time world champion behind, the first internal fight finally began.

Back and forth it went between the two, who overtook each other multiple times in a yo-yo style, until Mercedes instructed them to stop, as both were on different tires and were simply costing each other time.

VSC brings the strategy decision

When the virtual safety car finally came out on lap 29, Antonelli took the chance to pit on his mediums – Russell stayed out on his hard tires. In the end, that was also the deciding factor, as Antonelli quickly caught up on fresh tires and left Russell no chance in the last laps.

Russell is annoyed that he ended up with the supposedly worse strategy. However, he does not blame the team: “I don’t think the team knew what the right strategy was,” he says. “And since Max was also involved in the fight, it was probably the right decision for the team to split the strategy.”

It seemed clear that Antonelli would come back to the pits again, as he had started on hard tires and switched to mediums during the red flag. Possibly, he could have stayed out, as others like Lewis Hamilton or Gabriel Bortoleto also ran on mediums, but the VSC offered the Italian a favorable chance to change.

“The VSC came at an inconvenient time,” Russell thinks. “I believe it would have been damn hard for the guys on the medium tires to catch someone on the hard tires.” But: Theoretically, Russell also had the chance to change tires under the VSC – at that time, he was ahead of Antonelli.

Mercedes: One stop the better option

But that was not in Mercedes’ interest: “At that point, the system said that the one-stop strategy would be ahead in the end,” defends Mercedes motorsport chief Toto Wolff the decision. “That the two-stop strategy comes closer towards the end but doesn’t quite make it. That was what the software said.”

The reason Antonelli was called in for a stop was that some tire wear was seen on competitors’ tires, even though Antonelli himself said the tires were still good. “So it was the right decision. And that’s why there was no big discussion,” emphasizes Wolff. “It was also the right decision to split the strategies because it was unclear which would be better.”

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“In hindsight, it’s of course easy to say I should have stopped – or if I had won the race, I would have said Kimi should have stayed out,” says Russell without blaming the team. “I would have just liked to duel with Kimi on the track.”

The chance for the duel was to come again in the final phase of the race, as Antonelli quickly left the other competitors behind on fresh mediums and set off in pursuit of his teammate.

“Today I thought of nothing else but trying to win – especially when I saw the chance,” says Antonelli about his brilliant comeback. “I pushed hard.”

Five laps before the end, the Italian was again right on his teammate’s tail and seemed to only have to snatch first place from him, but then came the scare for Toto Wolff and all the fans in the stands in turn 2: Both drove side by side through the chicane and Antonelli then into the gravel.

Scare moment: Antonelli in the gravel trap

There was no contact between the two; instead, Antonelli was simply on the gravel stones and tire debris lying there on the outside of turn 2 and slid off. “If he gets stuck there …”, Wolff imagines the worst-case scenario. “That definitely wasn’t necessary. I have to think about how we could have maybe managed that better.”

At that time, Mercedes did not want to issue a team order but let their drivers have free rein. “I think today they showed that they can race hard against each other without crashing,” the Austrian says to Sky.

“So that one moment, we should have tried to avoid. I don’t yet know exactly how we learn from it, but until then they really fought well together.”

In the end, the scene had no impact from Antonelli’s point of view anyway. The two seconds deficit he incurred from the gravel excursion he quickly made up and then passed Russell with a delay, who according to Wolff had “blunt weapons” at that time.

“I would have loved to continue on the same strategy because I felt in a good position in this duel,” Russell says in retrospect. “I more or less knew exactly what I had to do with energy management to defend but also when to attack and make these maneuvers.”

“So it would have been very interesting to see how the race would have gone without the VSC.”

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