Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff admits: “I’m struggling to understand it”

Very few Grand Prix pundits and fans expected championship leader Kimi Antonelli to secure pole position in Austin. The young championship leader, who could be crowned the youngest Formula 1 world champion in history at the Circuit of the Americas, finished Friday’s practice sessions in second place, just a short way behind the day’s fastest driver, Charles Leclerc.

However, in the final free practice session on Saturday morning and also in the first qualifying segment, the 20-year-old title contender seemed to lack the pace needed to be in the running at the very front. Yet the speedy curly-haired driver did not let this discourage him. In Q2, he was just eight hundredths slower than Leclerc, who topped the middle segment.

And in Q3, he set a lap time that no rival could match. In the end, he was 0.179 seconds faster than Max Verstappen, who snatched second place on the front row of the grid. Antonelli’s team-mate George Russell, on the other hand, finished in sixth place.

Toto Wolff warns: US Grand Prix will be a major test

Team principal Toto Wolff looked completely taken aback, and later confirmed: “To be honest, George’s lap time was roughly what we thought our car was capable of. We weren’t entirely happy with the set-up and the upgrade we fitted to the car two races ago. But then Kimi conjured up a miracle lap and I don’t really understand where that came from.”

The Viennese team boss also revealed: “A guest of the team asked me before qualifying what was possible, and I told him it would be somewhere between third and fifth place. Now we’ve got a car on pole; we’ve made a really strong impression. So the car has the potential to be fast. We just need to work out how to tap into that.”

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Looking ahead to the upcoming US Grand Prix, however, Wolff remains cautious: “The race will be a major test. We know our rivals are strong, but hopefully we can fight for the win and score a good haul of points as a team.”