As Motorsport.com reports, the Mercedes Formula 1 team has offered reasons behind Kimi Antonelli's handling difficulties and costly spin in the Brazilian Grand Prix. Coming into the weekend fresh off his maiden title being confirmed in Mexico, Kimi Antonelli lined up second on the grid and looked ready to snatch the lead away from polesitter Lando Norris after a poor start. He built up a comfortable buffer over the first 15 laps of a wet-dry-wet race, running strong before the race turned on its head.
The turning point came on lap 18 when the team pitted him to change from worn intermediates to slicks in response to Norris pitting one lap prior. Almost immediately, Kimi Antonelli began reporting puzzling suspension issues, feeling like his W17 was pulling to one side. Just two laps later, the rear end of his car suddenly snapped under braking at Turn 1, spitting him out into the run-off area with zero warning.
That meant both of the drivers, and indeed other drivers in the field, actually thought there was something broken with the car,
While Kimi Antonelli managed to recover, the mistake cost him the lead to Norris and dropped him further down the order to ultimately finish fifth, 41 seconds behind Norris. That wasn't his only off-track excursion either, as he had already gone off at the slippery Turn 12. His team-mate George Russell also had his hands full, fortunate to survive a spin at the narrow pit exit before rallying to finish just ahead of Kimi Antonelli in fourth.
Reflecting on the chaos once his initial anger had subsided thanks to Mercedes clinching the constructors' title—their first since 2021—Kimi Antonelli admitted the sudden loss of grip caught him entirely off guard. "Like no warning, nothing," he said, noting that he felt something weird with the car the moment he put on the softs. After investigating the handling anomalies reported by both drivers, Mercedes concluded the culprits were the tricky, cooler conditions making it exceptionally difficult to get the tyres into the right operating window.
Mercedes deputy team principal Bradley Lord explained in the team's social media debrief that Kimi Antonelli had suffered a spin, flat-spotted all four tyres, and had his pace somewhat limited as a result. Lord noted that the squad really struggled on the dry soft tyre and in the final inter-stint, leaving them with a car that was very, very tricky to drive, very oversteery, and suffering from very low tyre temperatures.
That thermal struggle tricked the drivers into thinking something mechanical had failed. "That meant both of the drivers, and indeed other drivers in the field, actually thought there was something broken with the car," Lord said, explaining that they were just below the tyre temperature window, occasionally popping into it before dropping back out in the damp conditions. Despite the bizarre handling and a topsy-turvy race featuring incidents like a formation lap spin and a pitlane pirouette, Lord highlighted that during the first inter-stint and a large part of the dry soft-tyre stint, they actually had the fastest car on track.
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