Belgian Grand Prix: George Russell ‘numb to disappointment’ as title hopes take another blow
As unfortunate as Russell was, that shouldn’t take anything away from the quality of Antonelli’s weekend.
He was more comfortable in the car than Russell, the pace came more easily to him, and even when VSC gave Leclerc the lead he didn’t look like he could win the race.
Mercedes’ battery charging problem also affected it on the first lap; Verstappen’s passing at the entrance to Eau Rouge was apparently due to this rather than clever driving by Antonelli to keep the Red Bull moving forward into the long straight ahead.
“It was crazy,” Antonelli said. “To be fair, I was very confused about what was going on because Max flew past me before Eau Rouge and I passed him back.
“But then I saw Charles almost approaching me and I thought: ‘What’s going on?’ I had no idea. On the track I was just trying to maintain position and I was constantly looking in the mirror because I saw so many cars coming. But it was a crazy start. Luckily we got away cleanly.”
Given the complexity of this year’s engines, the near 50/50 split between internal combustion and electric power, and the inherent energy starvation, it’s clear these issues are common to most teams.
Antonelli said: “Sometimes you don’t understand. I had the same thing in Australia, for example. It may depend a little on the driving, but sometimes the system does something a little different.”
“You have to appreciate the work done as a team because the system is very complex. Of course they try to make things a little easier, but sometimes it’s hard to get it perfect.”
“Also, sometimes, especially on tracks like this that require a lot of energy, if you start driving differently, it gets a little crazy from a system perspective. So, it’s a tough situation.”
“But I must admit that there was a slight problem for George this weekend. I’m sure that will be resolved for Budapest.”
Antonelli had just made his pit stop when the VSC stepped in to allow police teams to collect some debris from the track.
This was the second time this happened. The former was too early for Antonelli to stop, and the latter gave Ferrari the chance to hold off Leclerc and rejoin ahead of Antonelli, as a driver loses half the race time when VSC is disabled and cars are restricted to a slower lap time for safety reasons.
Although Antonelli was able to steadily gain the advantage in the early laps and slowly retake and pass Leclerc to take back the lead relatively comfortably, his pace was perhaps not as strong as expected compared to everyone else.
There is at least some hope for the future of competitive racing.
Lando Norris, whose McLaren team has the first of two update packages coming to Hungary, said: “Maybe I’m a little surprised they’re not stronger.
“They still won the race, so they didn’t have a bad weekend. But we were definitely closer.” [on pace] “Today we performed better than we expected and that’s a good sign.”
