Kimi Antonelli applied a little more ink to his reputation as Formula 1’s consummate fast learner by reclaiming Mercedes’ position of pre-eminence in qualifying for the Miami Grand Prix.
On Friday, in qualifying for the sprint race, Antonelli’s 0.222s deficit to McLaren’s Lando Norris was explained as the legacy of a disrupted practice session in which a power unit issue had prevented him from running on the soft tyres he would use in the final segment of sprint quali. He reported his car “came alive” on the softs, but the lack of track time on them manifested itself in fractions of a second left on the table.
Easy to write that off as an excuse then. But a day later, having won the sprint race commandingly, Norris actually went slower in Q3 than he had in the final shootout for the sprint grid, and was outpaced not only by Antonelli, but also by Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc.
This after Antonelli had one of those races in the sprint – a bad start, followed by a collection of track-limits strikes which lost him a place in the final reckoning.
“It’s not like I think we did a bad job,” said Norris afterwards. “I think other people just, they did a pretty bad job yesterday and today they just did the job that they should have done. And I said it yesterday already, like Mercedes were just as quick as us.
“When you look at the GPS from Ferrari and Red Bull, there’s many places they are quicker than us. You know, so I think we just did a very, very good job yesterday and I did a good job yesterday, and we did a good job this morning to win the race.
“Today is probably just a little reality check, but it’s more where we just deserve to be and where we should be, honestly.”
Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes
Photo by: Guido De Bortoli / LAT Images via Getty Images
Miami International Autodrome is one of those when-it’s-gone-it’s-gone tracks where drivers struggle to claw back laptime lost early on. It’s a factor of the layout as well as the low-grip surface: leak time in the fiddly, twisty opening sector and the temptation is to push hard elsewhere, but this tends to lead to further small slides and errors which compound the losses.
The latest generation of F1 cars have subtracted from rather than added to the opportunities to regain time in the conventional areas, since they need to super clip into Turn 11, where once a difference could have been made. There are similarities here with Turn 9 at Albert Park.
Similarly the ramp-down in electrical deployment at the end of the back straight cuts down on opportunities to make a difference. Also, the tendency of the front tyres to lose temperature on the straights adds to the tendency to lock up at the end of them.
What could make the difference, though, was different approaches to electrical deployment throughout the lap – not that this is a subject which delights fans of a certain vintage.
Different boost strategies define the lap
Antonelli’s first Q3 lap, 1m27.798s, put him just over three tenths ahead of Leclerc and Verstappen’s times, set just moments earlier. When he went out again and tried to go faster, he overcooked it and had to abort the lap – while Verstappen briefly looked to be in contention for pole.
An examination of the data reveals why.
“Yesterday [Friday], I had a little issue on the last lap [in SQ3] with the deployment,” said Antonelli.
“So definitely today we maximised that more. For sure, we’ve been moving the deployment around, just trying to find the best compromise.
“And for sure, it makes a difference. You know, it’s not easy to pick and understand which are the best places.
“Because even in a small straight, sometimes you underestimate how much you can gain by just deploying a bit more. So yeah, it’s definitely that has helped. And the team has been doing a tremendous job on that side.”
At the beginning of their fastest laps, Verstappen (the dark blue trace in our image, above) crept up to 9km/h quicker faster on the start/finish straight, perhaps as a result of deploying fractionally more electrical power; Verstappen was also in a higher gear. That translated into an advantage of 0.16s between Turns 1 and 2.
But Antonelli (light blue trace) then had to feather the throttle less acutely through the twists of Turns 2 and 3. That began to bring him even with Verstappen, but what then built a substantial advantage was a much higher speed profile: on the run to Turn 4 Antonelli built to a peak of 289km/h, while Verstappen’s flattened off at 267km/h.
This contributed to an advantage for Antonelli of around three tenths as they exited sector two, even though Verstappen briefly nibbled away at that by being later off the throttle into Turn 6. Antonelli picked up the throttle earlier at the Turn 8 exit and restored the balance.
Verstappen’s purple sector two
Over the course of a storming second sector, Verstappen overturned the majority of his deficit and, again, it was all in the deployment. On the gently sinuous not-quite-straight run towards Turns 9 and 10 the gap held but, as the track properly straightened out, Antonelli paid for using more electrical power in sector one as his top speed began to drop off, signifying the electrical input ramping down.
Verstappen’s speed also tapered down 344 to 327km/h before he began super clipping, but the significant factor was that his pace began to tail off much later and more gently – plus super clipping kicked in after Antonelli’s had begun. This much is indicated by the trajectories of the speed traces angling down sharply while both cars are at full throttle.
Max carried on eating away into the gap through the more fiddly section at the end of sector two, taking a less aggressive initial approach to Turn 13 which enabled him to hang on to full throttle slightly longer and carry more speed through Turns 14 and 15, the awkward chicane under the Florida Turnpike junction.
But although this was enough for Verstappen to clock a purple second sector and bring them almost even, Antonelli was faster through the short chute between Turns 15 and 16, then again onto the back straight.
Antonelli squeezes the drops dry
Into sector three, the Red Bull and Mercedes were evenly matched on initial acceleration onto the back straight, but Antonelli was able to hang on to electrical charge slightly longer, and preserved a fractional top speed advantage even as the input began to ramp down. Max’s approach to the Turn 17 hairpin, later off the throttle and on the brakes – naturally – gave a slightly higher speed profile on entry but he paid for it at the exit, enabling Antonelli to stay clear to the tune of 0.166s at the line.
George Russell was 0.399s off his team-mate in fifth place and put this gap down to his incompatibility with this circuit and its low-grip ilk.
“I just made a mistake on my last corner, last lap, I was about three tenths up,” Russell explained. “A little bit annoyed, but this is a track I’ve always struggled with. Kimi was pole last year, I was P5, today he’s pole and I’m P5.
“It’s just very low grip here, you’re sliding around a lot, tarmac’s hot. Similar to Brazil, Kimi again was more competitive than me there. Whereas I much prefer the high grip conditions, where the tyre and the car is more connected with the ground.
“So, yeah, I just want to get through this weekend, really.”
“In the end, well, he’s Kimi,” reflected team boss Toto Wolff. “He puts in an incredible lap and then wants even more. And then it goes wrong again, but at least he doesn’t put it in the wall, he just messes up the lap…”
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– The Autosport.com Team
