Antonelli Loses Points Again as Mercedes Accept Blame

• Kimi Antonelli’s championship lead has been cut from 66 points after Monaco to just 25 after a wheel-shield failure at Silverstone ended his chance of winning the British Grand Prix, with Mercedes accepting full responsibility for the car’s breakdown.
• Toto Wolff said the team would need to strip the car down at the factory to understand how a brake duct failure caused such severe consequences, adding that Mercedes had suffered “too many DNFs” across the 2026 season.
• George Russell collected second place after Mercedes kept him out on old tyres under the late Safety Car, and gave an honest verdict: a 25-point deficit to Antonelli “is probably correct” based on what both drivers have delivered across nine races.

Kimi Antonelli appeared on course to win the British Grand Prix when it mattered most. Mercedes’ race simulations showed him overtaking Charles Leclerc with six laps remaining, closing on fresh tyres while Leclerc’s rubber faded. Then, on lap 41 of 52, Antonelli radioed the team to report that something had broken at the front of his car.

By the time Antonelli crossed the line at Silverstone, he had been demoted from ninth to 16th after a track limits penalty. His championship lead, 66 points following the Monaco Grand Prix four weeks earlier, now stands at 25 over George Russell, with Lewis Hamilton a further seven points back. Three races have cost Antonelli 41 points of a lead that once looked formidable.

Mercedes have accepted the blame.

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A Race Mercedes Were About to Win

The failure arrived at the worst possible moment for Antonelli. He had pitted earlier than the leaders and was closing on Leclerc at a rate that Mercedes’ data told them would be enough to overtake with six laps remaining. Then came contact with the exit kerb at the high-speed Copse corner, though Antonelli noted it was not a heavier hit than ones he had made on previous laps.

“On that lap, I probably hit it [the kerb] even less than previous laps. And I could feel instantly something broke,” Antonelli told Sky Sports F1.

The damage was not immediately identifiable to the driver or the team.

“I just didn’t know what was going on, and also the team, was trying to understand initially we thought it was the front wing, but then it wasn’t the front wing,” Antonelli said. “There was something, like, fundamental that was broken.” The scale of the performance loss, he added, felt like more than a wheel shield alone.

Mercedes pitted Antonelli for a new front wing to try to fix the handling problem. It did not work. A second stop was needed to remove the damaged component before the car became manageable again. By that point, he had fallen to the back of the lead-lap cars and any chance of points had gone.

Wolff Takes Responsibility

Team principal Toto Wolff was blunt about where accountability sat.

“It’s on us. A car should not break. I don’t think the ride was worse than any laps before,” Wolff told Sky Sports F1. “He couldn’t turn any more. We haven’t done the post-mortem for what’s happened. It’s just fury we have at the moment.”

Wolff identified the failure as involving the brake duct, which had cascaded into the wheel hub assembly and left the car unable to steer into left-hand corners.

“It looks like it was a brake duct. The cake tin [part of the wheel hub assembly] and wheel shield, something got stuck in there and that’s why it wasn’t able to turn,” Wolff said. “I’ve seen the car, but it’s not yet clear really what happened [to cause the failure]. We’ve got to take the whole car back to the factory […] to really see where it happened, how it happened, and why we have such severe consequences of maybe not being able to turn.”

With Antonelli struggling to turn the car into left-hand corners, Wolff faced a decision on whether to retire the car for safety reasons or allow him to continue.

Wolff said that had the decision rested on him alone, he would have parked the car ten laps from the end on safety grounds. “But then suspension looked OK, that’s the biggest issue, and he was just basically surviving from left corner to left corner and saying that he could do that.”

A Penalty That Erased the Final Points

As Antonelli wrestled the broken car around the circuit, he collected enough track limits violations to earn a five-second time penalty. That sanction, applied at the end of the race, pushed him from ninth to 16th and cost him the few points he had been holding onto in the final stages.

Antonelli called the penalty “a joke” over team radio. Mercedes explored whether any grounds existed to have it removed, with Wolff arguing the driver was simply trying to keep the car on the track with compromised steering.

“We’re definitely looking at a situation where we can avoid that penalty for track limits,” Wolff said. “He was basically surviving from lap to lap and saying that he could do that.”

Antonelli kept his composure when reflecting on what the day had cost him.

The day had slipped away with a real shot at the win still on the table, he acknowledged. “It’s one extra motivation to be back stronger and be even better,” he said.

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Russell’s Honest Verdict

While Antonelli left Silverstone without points, Russell collected second place in circumstances that surprised even him. Mercedes kept him out on old tyres when the late Safety Car was triggered by Max Verstappen’s crash at Stowe. Ferrari pitted Hamilton. The gamble worked for Russell, who inherited second from Hamilton and crossed the line in a result he would not have predicted at the start of the final stint.

“Strange emotions, really nice to finally stand on the podium here at Silverstone with the family here,” Russell told Sky Sports F1. “It’s not been the nicest to me, Silverstone, in the years gone by. So I’ll take it, but it’s still a lot of work to do. The pace in qualifying, the straight-line speed wasn’t good enough, in the race it was better, but the pace was not there. We need to understand why and if I want to fight for this championship, we need to do better.”

Russell has now recovered 43 points out of Antonelli’s lead across the last three races. Asked for his honest assessment of whether the championship table reflected what the two drivers had actually delivered, he did not avoid the question.

“Whether the luck has balanced out or not, I’m not sure. However, based on my performances and based on his performances over the course of these nine races, I think probably a 25-point gap in his favour is probably correct,” Russell said. “He has done a better job than me this year to this point, so he deserves to be ahead of me. Whether it should be 25 points, whether it should be 10 points, whether it should be 35 points is a debate, but in that ballpark.”

Russell noted that his own drive-through penalty at Monaco had cost him 15 points, and estimated that a fair gap to Antonelli would fall somewhere between 10 and 30 points. At 25, the current margin sits within that range. He was not asking for sympathy on the luck question; he was placing it in context.

A Reliability Pattern That Demands an Answer

The Silverstone failure is not the first time Mercedes have lost points through mechanical problems this year. Two battery-related issues, one affecting Russell in Canada and one affecting Antonelli in Barcelona, cost the team a combined 36 points earlier in the campaign. Similar reliability concerns have troubled Mercedes power unit customers across the grid throughout 2026.

Wolff acknowledged the pattern and signalled that the team would need to recalibrate its priorities.

“Generally, we just had too many DNFs and lost two second places and now one victory,” he said. “Other than the top car that we have, and the great driving, that is the predominant issue. I think we are such a performance organization on the chassis and engine side, we want to squeeze everything out. But I’d rather dial back, a little bit, something that is really good, and fix some of the reliability gremlins, rather than running behind on performance. So far, we’ve won seven races out of nine. And I’d rather have this than slow and unreliable.”

Antonelli’s lead stands at 25 points going into the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps from July 17 to 19. Ferrari are applying consistent pressure. Russell has found form at the right time. Three more races like the last three could turn a comfortable buffer into a fight that goes to the final round. What Mercedes cannot afford is another mechanical failure at the front of a race their driver was on course to win.

Written by

Jack Renn

Jack Renn is an editor at F1 Chronicle and a veteran motorsport journalist with 25 years of experience covering Formula 1 and international motorsport. A member of the Association Internationale de la Presse Sportive (AIPS), the global body representing accredited sports journalists, Jack has spent his career reporting from paddocks and press rooms across the F1 calendar. His work spans race analysis, technical insight, and in-depth features, giving readers authoritative coverage grounded in decades of firsthand experience at the highest level of the sport.

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