How Antonelli earned ‘driver of the day’ status in Chinese GP

When Formula 1 revealed that Mercedes rookie Andrea Kimi Antonelli had won its driver of the day poll, having crossed the finishing line in eighth place, this news generated the customarily sneering response. When team boss Toto Wolff congratulated his driver over the team radio, the eye-rolling was almost palpable.

And yet, while the results of the social media poll are often fatuous, in this case there were reasons to be impressed with Antonelli’s performance: floor damage had caused a huge shift in his W16’s performance characteristics. The likely culprit is debris from Charles Leclerc’s contact with Ferrari team-mate Lewis Hamilton on the opening lap.

Although the consequences of the damage showed up in data, Mercedes chose not to apprise Antonelli of the reason for his car misbehaving until later in the race.

“He had extensive floor damage,” said Wolff in his post-race press conference. “We don’t know exactly why, whether he ran over Charles’s endplate, but there was a massive hole in the floor, the titanium streaks [skid plates] were gone.

“Considering he had a car which was severely impaired – holding onto it, finishing eighth, not complaining, just getting on with the job, shows the maturity and the potential he has.”

Although Leclerc’s impact with Hamilton’s sidepod resulted in an immediate shower of debris, the main part of the endplate didn’t detach until later on the opening lap. Antonelli was running behind Leclerc on track through the opening sequence of corners as he fought Isack Hadjar for seventh place, making that move stick on the outside at the exit of Turn 3 – where Verstappen was on an inside line, trying to pass Leclerc on the left.

Antonelli was undercut by Yuki Tsunoda at the first round of pitstops, then had the indignity of being overtaken by Esteban Ocon with two wheels on the grass. Though he slipped back relative to Ocon through his final stint, Antonelli got a position back when Tsunoda had to pit for a new front wing.

“I could feel something was weird from lap one,” Antonelli told Sky Sports F1 after the race. “Yesterday the limitation was the front left, today the limitation was the rear for the whole race – which was quite unusual, I found it really weird.”

The Shanghai circuit is something of an outlier on the F1 calendar because the front axle is stressed more than the rear: there are fewer areas requiring hard acceleration and most of the corners are slow to medium-speed. Crucially, the tightening radius of the opening sequence of right-hand corners combines with the fast right-hander onto the back straight to punish the front-left tyre.

Having a rear limitation on a car here makes it vulnerable at the exit of that opening sequence of turns, and under traction onto the back straight – which is highly damaging to overall lap time.

“It was really hard to keep up, I was trying to look after the rears as much as possible,” said Antonelli. “Mentally it was a good experience, a good lesson, because it was tough.”

Antonelli then gained another two positions after the race when both Ferraris were disqualified – Leclerc because his car was found to be underweight, Hamilton because of illegal plank wear.