Antonelli praises mechanic ‘heroes’ after stunning Qualifying comeback

Kimi Antonelli feels that “the mechanics were the heroes” in his journey to claim P2 in Qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix, after the Mercedes youngster bounced back from a massive crash in FP3.

The Italian was in the mix towards the front of the pack throughout the weekend, beating team mate George Russell to second place in FP2, but he faced a major setback when he dramatically hit the barriers in the final hour of Practice.

With just a few hours before Qualifying, Mercedes had a significant repair job on their hands. Following a red flag for Max Verstappen’s Q1 crash, they gained a crucial couple of minutes and were able to send Antonelli out with less than 10 minutes to go.

“It’s been a very, very stressful day,” he said after the session. “Unfortunately in FP3 I went into the wall, but the guys, the mechanics today were the heroes, [they] put the car back on track.

“We couldn’t even set up the car, we just went out and managed to put it on the front row, so I’m really happy with that.”

Antonelli continued to improve throughout Qualifying, progressing from sixth to third and finally second place in each segment, albeit with a concerning lock-up at the beginning of Q3.

He recovered once again to claim provisional pole with an impressive effort of 1m 18.811s before Russell demoted him to P2 – the pair becoming the only drivers to breach the 1m 18s bracket.

While he was still nearly three-tenths adrift of his team mate, his own nearest rival in Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar was half a second further behind, establishing Mercedes as the current strongest team on the grid for the opening round.

Expanding on his final lap, Antonelli said: “It was not easy, I had to dig deep, but I need to have a clean weekend next time because it definitely compromised Qualifying. But we have a race tomorrow to look ahead [to] and a good result is possible.”