Mercedes F1 ended their Friday at the Australian GP with a note of uncertainty. They left the FP2 timesheets with George Russell in 10th, clocking in a 1:17.282, and F1 newcomer Kimi Antonelli in 16th, with a 1:17.634. A soild way behind compared to the top of the leaderboard.
Antonelli confidence buildup
Today marks Kimi Antonelli‘s first proper Friday practice session as an official F1 driver for Mercedes. He remarked that it is of positive progress for him and the car.
However, It is still under the learning phase for the rookie. Learning the ins and outs of the W16, the 18-year-old gains more confidence with every run.
“Yeah, I mean, it was, I think, quite a positive day. There’s some work to do on single lap, just getting the tyres in the right window, but overall I felt pretty good.
“I did a little mistake at the end, but overall I think I’m getting confidence, more and more confidence level up, and I think long run was quite positive today, so definitely ahead of tomorrow.”
It’s still quite the new experience for Antonelli, as he noted that he’s still getting to grip on the new tyre compounds .
“I mean, the C5 is a compound I never really use, so definitely I’m learning it. Especially the warm-up is quite tricky, but we’ve got some good data ahead of tomorrow.”
Looking forward to the rest of the weekend, Antonelli’s positive that they can show up when it matters.
“It’s a bit too early because we don’t really know what the others are doing, but, to be honest, today was a positive day. The car is feeling good and we’ll see what we can do tomorrow.”
Mercedes F1 car with varying competitive levels on different tyres at F1 Australian GP
George Russell offered a different perspective, calling the day with a bit of uncertainty. As he noted, following their run plans, the medium and hard compounds offered similar performance to the soft during runs, seemingly putting the W16 into a performance plateau.
He was quick on the mediums in the short runs, and looked quite competitive on the longer runs on the C3 hard tyre.
The Brit said that they have to understand why they are not making the most out of the C5s, especially a night before a crucial qualifying session.
“Yeah, it was a really up-and-down day because every time we had the medium or the hard tyre on, we were right in the top two of the timesheets and every lap felt good, felt confident, same.
“Yeah, faster on the hard than the soft, and then we put the soft on, we didn’t go much quicker. So, you know, it’s clearly there is a bit of pace in the car and it’s just getting the most out of the tyre, so we need to understand why that is.
“Let’s see what we can achieve overnight. I mean, if the session stopped after the hard tyre and if the session stopped after the medium tyre and FP1, I’d have said, ‘yeah, definitely, we’re there or thereabouts’.
“But, obviously, you don’t qualify on the hard or the medium tyre, you qualify on the soft tyre, and we don’t seem so competitive on that one. So I’m sure we can find some improvements tonight.”
