Deputy Team Principal Bradley Lord opened up about how the hydraulic issue on Thursday affected Kimi Antonelli’s race weekend and whether Mercedes helped him compartmentalise his mistake in F1 qualifying following the Italian’s fifth-place finish at the 2026 Azerbaijan GP on Saturday.
Antonelli lined up in P16 due to retiring the car after contact with the wall in Q1, which brought an early end to his qualifying session.
The out-of-position championship leader had bolted on a set of used mediums for his first stint. However, his mission to move up the order got off to a shaky start as he dropped back to P17.
Antonelli managed to overtake Arvid Lindblad, Carlos Sainz, and Esteban Ocon to take P13 by Lap 10, but his deficit to teammate George Russell was looking more difficult to overhaul with every lap.
Antonelli then capitalised on a close battle between Liam Lawson and Alex Albon, which allowed him to eventually pass both and creep closer to the points.
After dispatching Ollie Bearman and Franco Colapinto, the 8-time race winner gained one more position when Lando Norris locked up going into Turn 1 on Lap 30 and took to the run-off area.
Albon also suffered a lock-up and drove into the barrier at Turn 6, bringing out the Safety Car on Lap 31. Antonelli swapped his mediums for softs, avoided the carnage at the first restart, and eventually found his way past Lewis Hamilton on Lap 43.
In the end, Antonelli crossed the line 0.376 seconds behind Charles Leclerc in fourth. His gap to teammate Russell in the Drivers’ standings has now shrunk down to 66 points.
Lord on how missing track time in FP1 and mistake in qualifying impacted Antonelli’s race
Antonelli suffered a hydraulic failure approaching the halfway point of FP1 that ended his participation in the one-hour session. He also missed the first half of running in FP2, as Mercedes fitted his W17 with a new power unit due to fire damage.
With regard to how the hydraulic problem in FP1 and the eventual loss of track time on Thursday had impacted the remainder of Antonelli’s weekend, Bradley Lord pointed out that he couldn’t match Russell’s race pace in a post-Azerbaijan GP print media session.
Noting how missing a chunk of track time in FP1 had forced the Bologna native to play catch-up, the Brit also emphasised that his mistake in the first segment of qualifying resulted in his failure to unlock the full performance of the W17 in Baku.
“In FP1. I’ve stuck to session names because I keep getting the days of the week wrong.
“I think you could see today he was a little bit off George’s [Russell] pace, even when he was running in free air. And no doubt that’s down for him, you know, A, to George having an incredibly strong weekend and B, just not quite getting the feeling with the car.
“Obviously he lost that time in FP1, was playing catch-up, and then had the incident in qualifying.
“And, you know, I think when you’re really stretching the legs of the car in qualifying is when the drivers really get a feel for how it’s performing and what it’s doing. So, he was missing those reference points.”
Lord explains why Mercedes didn’t expect a Monza 2.0 from Antonelli at the 2026 Azerbaijan GP
At the same time, Bradley Lord stated that Mercedes hadn’t expected a Monza-esque comeback—which saw Antonelli emerge victorious starting from P19—given the different characteristics of the Baku City Circuit and the comparative difficulties in overtaking.
Lord, nonetheless, showered Antonelli with praise for his solid recovery drive to P5 at the Azerbaijan GP and remarked that the lack of obvious mistakes on Saturday bodes well for the remainder of his 2026 F1 season. He particularly drew attention to the Italian’s intuition and commended him for walking away relatively unscathed from the multi-car accident at the first Safety Car restart.
“I think it was important not to come into the race thinking this is going to be Monza 2.0. But it’s Baku. It’s a very different circuit, different overtaking difficulty, different challenges. And I think he drove the race that was in front of him really well.
“He actually came out of Lap 1 P17. So, to finish up P5, to kind of have the intuition and the foresight to know that that the accident was coming at Turn 1 at the restart and to back out of it so that those other cars took themselves out and he was able to navigate through, albeit with a bit of damage from one of the Haases, showed a really good grasp of the big picture today.
“So, I think to get back to P5—not to make any mistakes as well, that was a big part of it—was a really, really strong recovery drive and a very good sign for the races to come.”
Whether the team had to help Antonelli reset before the race
With respect to Antonelli’s session-ending mistake in Q1 and whether Mercedes had to help him contextualise it as a one-off incident, Bradley Lord responded, “No, he was straight on that.”
Revealing how the 6-time polesitter had immediately taken responsibility for clipping the wall and damaging the car, the 46-year-old added that he had faith in the Mercedes driver’s ability to process the incident and reset ahead of the 51-lap race.
Lord reiterated that Antonelli’s recovery drive at the 2026 Azerbaijan GP had demonstrated his capacity to comprehend the bigger picture and claimed that he had exceeded the Brackley-based outfit’s expectations by limiting the damage and scoring 10 crucial points.
“All top racing drivers are way more self-critical than they are vulnerable to any input from outside. And he was just straight away ‘completely unnecessary’, apologised to the team, and took it as the reminder that you’ve got to be right on it every single lap of every single session.
“So, I think he’s well able to both analyse it, compartmentalise it, put it behind him, and then go and do the job today.
“And as I say, it was the drive of someone who understood the big picture at each point of the race. To get back to P5, damage limitation from P17 as he was running after the first lap was, I think, at the upper end of the optimistic predictions we had in the morning strategy meeting.”
