Mercedes improved their times from FP1 to FP2 on Friday at the F1 Las Vegas GP. However, they have one practice session left to get everything tightened up for the F1 Las Vegas GP qualifying. With 32 points dividing Red Bull and Mercedes in the Constructors’ Championship for P2, starting position is crucial.
With Kimi Antonelli’s first time around Las Vegas, the Italian finished the day in P2 with a red flag filled FP2. The 19-year-old knows he has work to do to capitalise on his strong start to the weekend. When asked about his time on track Friday, Antonelli responded, “Yeah, I mean, I think it was a good day overall.
“You know, just learning the track, obviously lap by lap, and yeah, it just felt good in the car, to be fair. Obviously still quite a bit of work to do, but it was a good start of the weekend.“
“Shocking” tyre grip
Antonelli benefitted from FP2’s higher tyre grip to place himself in the top three. However, with the Las Vegas GP’s low-grip nature early in sessions, the Italian driver still needs to work on getting the tyres up to temperature amid changing track conditions.
“I mean, the grip was quite shocking in the first session, first few laps, but no, it was incredible, you know, the evolution, and again in FP2 the grip was much higher. So, you know, we kind of expect the same tomorrow, but yeah, just need to keep evolving with the grip, obviously, and trying to, you know, also adjust the car to the track, and yeah, just keep doing this job.“
With multiple interruptions throughout FP2, Antonelli understands the difficult decisions the team must make to maximise performance in qualifying. Mercedes’ pit wall needs to balance running last to take advantage of track evolution with ensuring they set a time early enough to avoid being caught out by red flags.
“Well, for sure, you know, the evolution is big during the session. So probably, you know, in qualifying is one of those sessions where you want to be last, but also, you know, it’s always quite tricky with red flags, of course, so it’s about finding the right balance, but we’ll see tomorrow, you know, in qualifying how big is the track evolution. If we see that, you know, by Q3 it kind of plateaus, we maybe, you know, we maybe think it’s not worth to go last-last, but if we still see the track is evolving a lot, then that’s something we’ll take into account.“
Being realistic
The rest of the grid seems prepared after Mercedes’s performance in colder temperatures last year. George Russell was able to capitalise on his Mercedes W15’s peak power to take the F1 Las Vegas GP win last year. However, the Briton know to keep level is expectations with how others performed on Friday.
Russell shared, “Yeah, well, I think I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of teams sort of brought some small changes to their car for this weekend based on sort of how good we were here last year. So, as I said, I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. We weren’t exactly setting the timing sheets on fire today. So we’ve got to be realistic. We’re there or thereabouts, but definitely not a slam dunk.“
Even though Mercedes is in P2 in the Constructor’s Championship, there is a 32 points gap ahead of Red Bull. Mercedes has only one practice session left to find the sweet spot to qualify higher than Red Bull and Ferrari to keep it P2 spot in the constructors’.
