Antonelli and Mercedes on vacation as leaders
Kimi Antonelli went boating as the F1 World Championship leader, but neither he nor Mercedes can sleep peacefully. Ferrari and McLaren have indeed closed in, taking three wins in the last five GPs from the Brackley team.
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Mercedes’ philosophy remains the same: let the drivers fight, and may the best win. But the terrible mistake in Barcelona must be avoided, when the duel between Antonelli and George Russell favored Lewis Hamilton’s triumph. As highlighted by deputy team principal Bradley Lord, Mercedes’ priorities are to perfect the reliability of the W17 and to maximize the overall points haul, regardless of who benefits most in the drivers’ standings.
Lord’s words
“We could have won all 10 races, but it didn’t go that way due to reliability issues and how we manage the race between the two drivers,” said Lord. “I believe the most important thing internally is those 100 points we can say we left on the table.”
“The feeling is one of a missed opportunity. We need to ask ourselves how to turn the results of one car into results of two cars. If we manage that, we would be in a stronger position in the championship; this must be the goal after the summer break.”
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The standings
The fight for the World Championships is indeed much more open than expected at the start of the season. In the Drivers’ standings, the big favorite Russell lost ground after the initial success in Melbourne, and Antonelli took advantage, now holding a 50-point lead over Lewis Hamilton and 59 over his teammate. In the Constructors’, Mercedes leads Ferrari by 72 points: a relatively small margin, considering the W17 was clearly the dominant car at the start of the season.
In both standings, the developments Mercedes will bring after the summer break (some arriving already at Zandvoort) will be crucial, as will those from Ferrari and McLaren: the Red car is the most reliable in the championship and has shown it can achieve good results on any type of track, the papaya team returned to victory with the Budapest upgrade and has more updates planned after the holidays.
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