Antonelli missed F1 Singapore GP front row because “emotion took over”

When your team-mate is sitting on pole position and you aren’t at least alongside them, you will have questions to answer – even in the modern era of convergence when the gaps are that much tighter.

Mercedes’ Andrea Kimi Antonelli turned that scrutiny on himself as he qualified fourth in Singapore, 0.379s off polesitting team-mate George Russell.

“My emotion took over,” he explained after the qualifying session. “And I just started to drive a bit tense, because I felt I had a real shot to at least front row – because we were quick. But then I started to overdrive.

“I started to push more and more. Starting to carry a lot of speed into the corners. But just, it was too much over the limit.”

Antonelli had something of a harum-scarum ride through all three sessions, coming close to being eliminated in Q1 when he had to abandon his first flying lap. The stewards investigated a possible impedance by Carlos Sainz, but decided there was no case to answer – as it was, the Williams driver was innocently driving out of the pits when Antonelli arrived on a peculiar trajectory, having overshot the first corner.

That left Antonelli with it all to do in his final shot at a push lap, in which he succeeded in progressing to Q2 with the fifth fastest lap of the session. But his progress through Q2 was similarly scrappy: his first flying lap was struck off for a track-limits infringement in the switchback Turns 1 and 2, then his second was comparable with the one which ultimately left Russell at the top of the session – until Turn 13. There, Antonelli had a ‘moment’ which cost him half a second compared with his team-mate, though he clawed much of it back by the end of the lap to go third overall.

Russell then found even more pace through Q3 while Antonelli didn’t – indeed, his second flier in Q3 was not only slower than his first, it was slower than his fastest lap in Q2.

“You know, it was good,” said Antonelli. “Well, Q3 wasn’t good. Q1 and Q2, I felt strong, because… Lap one, I had traffic [Sainz], and then I felt a bit under pressure, because I didn’t have a lap on the board. But then we were able to deliver a strong lap.

“And then Q2, I was feeling really good in the car. I had a big moment on lap two, where I lost quite a bit of time, but we were still P2 or P3 after the session.

“And then, yeah, Q3, I just… I think I let the emotion… It was a shame, because I looked at the data, and most of the corners were quicker, also compared to Q2. But in those few corners, I just pushed too much. And [they] were corners where I didn’t have to push anymore.”

The telemetry data indicates Antonelli braked and got off the throttle later at Turn 1 in his first Q3 lap than he did in his Q2 lap, then noticeably later on the brakes into Turns 7, 8 and 16, more aggressive on the throttle between Turns 7 and 8, but he had to linger on the brakes longer at Turn 18 and wasn’t able to blend the throttle in as quickly. The net result was a lesser improvement of 0.112s over his Q2 lap; he had been three tenths up at Turns 16/17.

On his second Q3 run he was 0.323s faster than he had been on his Q2 lap at Turn 6, which would have put him fractionally ahead of Max Verstappen and on the front row of the grid if he had been able to sustain it to the end of the lap.

Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes F1 W16

Photo by: Shameem Fahath / Motorsport Network

But he lost a chunk of speed by overcommitting into Turn 7, then clawed some of it back, but tried to carry more speed through Turn 10 and that compromised him in the complex which followed.

On the run between Turns 13 and 14 he slipped into negative territory compared with his Q2 lap and ended up 0.112s slower.

“We were already quick [in the second Q3 flying lap],” he said. “And I just lost it all. It was a shame. I feel disappointed, because the potential was a lot higher.”

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– The Autosport.com Team