That Mercedes machine was walking a tightrope. As Autosport reports, Kimi Antonelli managed to rack up four track limits violations during the Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix yet somehow avoided facing a penalty from the stewards.
Now, the standard five-second sanction wouldn't have actually altered the final classification anyway. The young charger brought that beast home in third place, sitting comfortably 15.9 seconds ahead of Lando Norris down in fourth.
The immediate paddock theory was that the fourth excursion—occurring precisely on the lap following his pit stop—simply hadn't been logged into the system, which would have left him safely below the permitted limit of three infractions. But an FIA spokesperson cleared up the mystery. That fourth offense was excused because of braking problems that had already popped up over the Mercedes team radio, which the stewards deemed a justifiable reason for running wide under Article B1.8.5 of the 2026 regulations.
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff admitted the whole ordeal is quite the nerve-wracker on the pit wall. The official deleted lap time documents show Antonelli copping strikes at Turn 2 twice and Turn 19 once during the opening half of the race, before the Turn 7 incident drew a sharp word from race engineer Peter Bonnington.
Once the dust settled, Wolff even cracked a joke about his driver's seating position to help him spot the tarmac. More seriously, the boss lauded the maturity of the drive, noting that the youngster kept his cool while wrestling a difficult car and learning on the fly.
