Andrea Kimi Antonelli will start the United States Grand Prix from pole position, but more shocking than his qualifying result was the way he sealed it.
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“It was surprising, but also one of the biggest achievements from me today is that I didn’t do track limits!” he laughed.
The white line has been kryptonite for Antonelli this season, who is a regular track limits offender.
In Singapore Toto Wolff joked — though with a serious undertone — that the 20-year-old Italian needed some pillows on his seat for better visibility.
The Circuit of the Americas has proved typically trying or drivers to master, with its patchwork surface, high track temperatures, bumps and variable winds all working together to tempt drivers into mistakes.
Every session has seen multiple drivers have laps deleted for wandering off the track at several different corners.
Antonelli offended as recently as FP3, when his fastest time was deleted for drifting off track through the esses. Both he and engineer Pete Bonnington both sounded resigned to the fact that it had happened and would probably happen again.
In qualifying, though, Antonelli kept it clean.
But if he’s to turn Sunday race into a championship coronation, he’ll have to slay his final big boss once and for all.
Only victory will do for Antonelli, and any slip from first place — with, say, a five-second penalty for track limits — could cost him his shot at history.
Of course the title will be his eventually this season, but winning it this weekend would equal the 34-year-old record set by Nigel Mansell for claiming a maiden title with five rounds remaining.
But it’s not entirely in his hands. He’ll need other results to go his way.
But after the required scenario seemed remote during practice, qualifying delivered a series of results that have brought his championship considerably closer.
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WHAT’S THE MATHS SAY?
Antonelli has a 102-point championship lead that he must grow to 125 points by the end of the United States Grand Prix.
He can do that only from first place. Anything less will force another round.
But he also needs George Russell and Lewis Hamilton to contribute to their own defeats.
Hamilton can finish no higher than fifth. That seemed improbable when he topped FP3 with a Ferrari that looked like the form car at the Circuit of the Americas.
But in yet another disappointing Q3 performance for Ferrari, the Englishman qualified fifth behind teammate Charles Leclerc in fourth.
So far that’s two out of three. What about Russell?
For a moment the Englishman was set to qualify seventh, putting him just two places out of the danger zone, but then Lando Norris had his best lap deleted for track limits, promoting Russell back to sixth.
If he finishes there, he’ll prolong the inevitable to Mexico.
Lose three places, however, and it’s all over.
On average this season Russell is losing 0.9 places off the line for grands prix, though this average is weighed down heavily by Mercedes’s poor early-season starts. He hasn’t lost a place in the last five starts, and he’s gained positions from his last two starts.
Mercedes would prefer that Antonelli didn’t claim the title this weekend given it would mean a poor overall team result, with Russell having to finish behind at least one midfield driver.
“We’re not talking about it,” Toto Wolff told Sky Sports. “It’s not realistic.
“The constructors championship is super important for us, so we’ve got to find a way of making (Russell) score big points tomorrow.”
If the drivers finish where they’re set to start, Mercedes will formally eliminate Red Bull Racing and McLaren from title contention, but while it will extend its lead over Ferrari, the Italian team will remain in the mix for at least another weekend.
MERCEDES UPGRADES FINALLY FIRING
Whether this weekend delivers Antonelli the championship or not, it’s shaping up as a good round for the team’s 2027 title hopes.
Mercedes started the weekend with some considerable question marks about its Malaysia upgrade that was meant to bring it as much as 0.3s per lap but instead dumped it back into the pack.
This update was particularly important because it set the development trajectory for next season. If the team suddenly found that it didn’t work, it would throw its 2027 plans into disarray with few races remaining this year for troubleshooting.
Singapore was a step forward, but the team was still dominated by the surging Red Bull Racing.
Antonelli’s pole has steadied the ship somewhat for Mercedes, proving that the pace the team thought was in the new package really is in there somewhere.
But Wolff admitted that the result was still a surprise, which raises its own questions about how much of the package the team really understands.
“We had a guest in the garage who asked me, ‘What do you expect from qualifying?’ and I said, ‘Something between P3 and P5’,” Wolff told Sky Sports. “The guy thinks I’m totally incompetent with my judgement — but we didn’t see that lap coming.
“I think the car is still very much on the edge. If you manage to land it well and drive it the right way, you have these kinds of performances. That is really encouraging to see, that it can do it.”
He added, though, that Russell’s underperformance was evidence that the car wasn’t yet in a happy place.
“You can see on the other car, with George, if you are not hitting that peak completely, then you fall out of (the window) and you’re having a 0.3s or 0.4s deficit.
“We want to have a car that’s fast but also predictable, which at the moment it isn’t.”
Though the signs are better for 2027, the clock is ticking on understanding how to regularly unlock performance from the car.
The key elements of next year’s car are being locked in now. Every lesson has to be absorbed in double time if the team isn’t to start next year at a disadvantage.
“We all know how important it is to understand why this upgrade hasn’t functioned, because that’s the development direction for next year,” he said.
“Do we understand 100 per cent? I don’t think we do yet.”
WHAT HAPPENED TO FERRARI?
At 145 points down with six grands prix remaining, Ferrari’s constructors title hopes are only a little better than mathematical.
That’s not to say the Italian team hasn’t had its chances.
It hasn’t been quick enough for long enough to apply any real pressure, but it’s also regularly failed to deliver as cleanly as it should have.
Qualifying was another example.
Ferrari had topped all three practice sessions and was the fastest car in Q2.
Then suddenly the car wasn’t fast anymore, and Leclerc and Hamilton qualified fourth and fifth.
Leclerc was 0.232s off the pace, with Hamilton 0.044s further back — times close enough that it would appear to be the limit of the car.
Both drivers have often lamented that, come Q3, other teams find more time than them, pushing their engines harder.
Leclerc, however, said the team had let itself down on this occasion.
“This time I think it’s slightly different,” he told Sky Sports. “I don’t think the others have changed anything from Q2 to Q3.
“Where we’ve lost is on ourselves. That is mostly the tyres.
“There was a bit more cloud in Q3. We lost one or two degrees of track temp, and for us it was a night-and-day difference.
“Already from the out-lap I felt like I was already having lots of difficulties.
“It’s a shame that it happens in Q3, because I strongly believe that we had the pace to be fighting in front, but unfortunately not today — again.”
The lap times demonstrate it well.
Antonelli found 0.243s between Q2, in which he finished second, and Q3.
Leclerc lost 0.069s between Q1, in which he was fastest, and Q3, leaving him fourth.
Replicating his Q2 time would have been enough to start on the front row.
Team boss Fred Vasseur put on a brave face, arguing it was all down to the last sector, where the wind direction suddenly changed in Q3 and left most drivers unable to improve with their final laps.
“But it’s the same for everybody. We can’t complain about the wind; this would be bullshit.
“I think we have to do a better job on the last lap because we had the potential to be at least on the first row.
“It’s also a matter of classification more than pure performance, but for today, but for a couple of hundredths, we can drop from P2 to P6 or P7, from hero to zero — a gust of wind or one metre on the braking point.
“It’s F1, and it’s like this … 0.1s you are moving from the top to the bottom.”
But all’s not lost for Ferrari.
“The last time I started from fourth here I won, so I hope we can do the same tomorrow,” Leclerc said, recalling his 2024 victory in Austin.
But it’s difficult to see the underpowered Ferrari cars getting past the Red Bull Racing duo.
MCLAREN ‘HARDEST CAR I’VE EVER DRIVEN’ — NORRIS
Lando Norris is adamant McLaren had the pace for him to start alongside Andrea Kimi Antonelli on the front row but that the car is so hard to drive that it was impossible to achieve.
Norris will line up eighth, one place behind teammate Oscar Piastri, after qualifying more than a second off the pace and almost 0.3s behind the Australian.
His second Q3 run had been good enough for sixth but was set while exceeding track limits, so it was deleted. His Q2 time had been half a second quicker, but that still would have been enough for only one extra place on the grid.
But his telemetry does show that he was roughly on par with Antonelli until turn 12 at the end of the back straight, where the final sector starts.
Sector 3 in Austin comprises all the corners the McLaren car hates — slow and mostly sharp, triggering the car to slide around, particularly given its tyres by then are already heavily worn.
Even on his deleted lap he lost 0.4s through this sector — but he insisted that the pace was there to capitalise.
“The car was very strong today in terms of pace,” he said. “(But) insanely difficult to drive — probably the hardest car I’ve ever had to drive in my life.
“But it was good enough for P2, so I should be P2, but I’m P8, so clearly I did a very bad job today.”
Piastri, who has never been particularly strong at Austin, was less enthusiastic about the car, suggesting Norris was less to blame for his struggles.
“It’s been tough from lap 1, to be honest,” he said. “Just trying to get performance out of the car has been very, very challenging.
“I think at points in qualifying — for Lando at least — it looked like there was potential in it, and I think we both kind of felt there is potential in it, but the difference between extracting that potential and not is 0.5s.
“It’s been very, very tough to get that lap time out of the car. I’ve not managed it at all, but I think when either of us has really pushed the boundaries, we can’t keep it on the track. It’s been a very challenging one for sure.”
Despite the underwhelming qualifying result, Piastri remained upbeat that he had improved on some of his long-running struggles at this circuit.
“I think today I did a reasonable job in the areas that I really wanted to focus on, but just trying to put a lap together had been almost impossible,” he said.
“I’ve not been anywhere near as competitive as I wanted to be. I think in the corners that I thought would be a struggle and have been types of corners that have been a struggle this year I think it’s been pretty good this weekend, but it’s more just been about trying to get everything in the lap together that’s been the real challenge.
“I don’t think it’s quite the same picture as it has been earlier in the season, but the end result is still the same, so it’s a bit of a shame — but I’m not too disappointed in that, because I think the areas I’ve been working on are still showing progress.”
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