So, Kimi Antonelli had to dig deep on Thursday at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix after a mechanical gremlin completely derailed the first half of his opening session. The Mercedes driver, who arrives at this weekend holding an 81-point advantage in the drivers' standings following his victory last time out in Madrid, found himself fighting on the back foot immediately.
That trouble arrived approaching the halfway point of Free Practice 1 when a hydraulic issue bit hard, shutting down his running for the rest of the one-hour session. Unfortunately, the garage drama did not stop there for the Italian. Fire damage meant the team had to fit a new power unit, forcing him to miss the first half of FP2 as well on a demanding street circuit where every single lap counts.
Remarkably, despite losing all that track time, the pace was still there when he finally got out. He ended Free Practice 1 fifth fastest and bounced back to clock the second quickest time in the second session.
"We tried to do the max with what we had. Obviously lost quite a few laps in FP1 and then missing half of FP2 is never ideal, especially on a street circuit," Antonelli said. "Overall I feel like it was a good recovery. I feel quite good in the car, obviously a few things to work on but looking forward to tomorrow."
On the other side of the garage, Mercedes team mate George Russell made things look easy by topping both sessions on Thursday. Russell finished more than half a second clear of Antonelli in FP2 as the team showed formidable pace on the streets of Baku.
Even with that speed, Mercedes Deputy Team Principal Bradley Lord warned that the timesheets are deceiving. Rivals like McLaren and Red Bull have brought pretty big update packages to the table, and Lord expects the playing field to level out significantly once everyone gets equal mileage on the tyres.
"We've seen competitors bring pretty big update packages if you look at McLaren, Red Bull as well. They'll be absolutely in the mix, I don't think the gaps at the top after FP2 were representative of the true gaps in performance," Lord said. "I think everything will be much closer once we're all running the same number of laps on the tyres. We hope to be in the mix, we should be in the mix on a low-drag circuit like this having performed really strongly at Monza but we'll have our work cut out to get on pole."
