Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes) warns in Singapore: “We’re a long way off that”

For the second year running, there will be no Mercedes on the front row of the grid for a 2026 Formula 1 World Championship race, but there is hope for the leaders in the Constructors’ Championship: Kimi Antonelli finished fourth in qualifying for the Singapore Grand Prix, a better result than George Russell in sixth place.

This is significant because Antonelli is driving the new car specification, whilst Russell is on the old one. Kimi wanted to race with the Evo package that hadn’t been fully understood in Malaysia, “because I feel it offers more potential; we just need to manage to coax it out of the car”, as the Italian noted in Singapore on Thursday.

Russell, for his part, wanted to drive the version used at Sepang ahead of the Bahrain Grand Prix, “because I feel more comfortable with it”. As a result, however, George finished two tenths behind Kimi in qualifying.

Kimi spoke about the final practice session for the Singapore Grand Prix: “We managed to get the car into a better operating window, even though we’re still limited in what we can do. The operating window is still too narrow.”

“I felt more comfortable in the car than I did on Friday. We’re starting to get a sense of the Evo package’s potential, but we’re still a long way from making the most of it. We need to deepen our understanding further to take the next step.”

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“The car’s balance varies greatly depending on whether I’m driving conservatively or attacking the track. The car is more sensitive than the previous version. In Turn 3, for example, I opened the throttle and the rear end immediately broke away. In Turn 10, on the other hand, the car pushed over the front axle when I increased the pace. It’s all still a bit off balance.”

“Tomorrow we’ll be driving the car in traffic, which is quite different from today’s qualifying session. There are still a lot of unknowns for me, because although we tried a long run in the only free practice session on Friday, we were still only at the very beginning of the set-up process. So it’s difficult to draw any conclusions for the race from that.”

“And the lessons to be learnt from the sprint are limited when it comes to getting a feel for the race, because the track was wet to start with, and we stayed on the intermediates for the whole sprint.”

“In any case, I need a good start and I’m sticking to my motto – to try and make the most of my potential in every race. I hope that leads to a podium finish.”