Formula 1 championship leader Kimi Antonelli appears to have dodged a bullet after his Mercedes suffered a smoky stoppage during practice at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, as Crash.net reports. The weekend immediately hit a wall when a hydraulics issue brought his car to a halt on track during the first practice session, sending smoke billowing from the machine before marshals rushed in with fire extinguishers.
That sudden breakdown burned 35 minutes of track time in FP1, leaving him sidelined until the second half of the second hour on Thursday afternoon when he finally returned in his W17. To thoroughly clear out the extinguisher fluid and inspect for any underlying issues, a Mercedes spokesperson confirmed that the team bolted an entirely new power unit onto the car for FP2. Thankfully, it was an older engine pulled straight from Antonelli's existing pool, meaning no grid penalties are triggered by the swap.
It's never ideal, especially at a street circuit, but overall I feel like it was a good recovery. I feel quite good in the car. A few things to work on but looking forward to tomorrow.
The 20-year-old Italian later confirmed that the whole ordeal failed to cause much damage to his original engine, keeping alive the hope that it can be repaired and slotted back into his rotation for the rest of the 2026 season. "I wanted them to spray a bit more because unfortunately I caused a bit of a fire," Antonelli joked about the marshals springing into action. "Luckily didn't do much damage but I was just encouraging them, but they did what they did."
Despite losing precious laps and being forced into catch-up mode, Antonelli bounced back immediately to finish FP2 second-fastest, sitting just half a second behind the pace set by his Mercedes team-mate George Russell. "We tried to do the max with what we had. Obviously we lost quite a few laps in FP1 and then missing half of FP2," reflected Antonelli, who currently leads the championship by 81 points over Russell. "It's never ideal, especially at a street circuit, but overall I feel like it was a good recovery. I feel quite good in the car. A few things to work on but looking forward to tomorrow."
Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin detailed the team's frantic efforts to salvage the day. "Kimi's day was disrupted. A hydraulic leak on his second run in FP1 brought an early end to the session after just three push laps," Shovlin explained. "As a precaution, we elected to change the power unit, which delayed the start of his FP2 and cost him further running. Despite that, he was able to complete a useful mix of low and high-fuel work, and his pace was encouraging given the limited track time he had available. There is plenty to analyse overnight and some small gains to find, but overall we've made a positive start to the weekend."
