Three races in, Kimi Antonelli leads the 2026 Formula 1 world championship. He has also, somehow, managed to shed a total of 20 positions at the start across the opening three grands prix and two sprint races . At the moment, Mercedes has a good enough car to help the young Italian push back up the field. But that can’t last forever.
F1TV presenter and former IndyCar driver James Hinchcliffe discussed this subject on the F1 Nation podcast after presenter Tom Clarkson argued that the fact he can joke about his poor starts means he’s in a good place mentally.
“It also means that the team has a phenomenal car because we’re going to get to a point where you don’t have that advantage and losing two or three places off the start isn’t okay. You’re not going to be able to bounce back from that every weekend for another 19 weekends, whatever it is.
“So, I think it’s working right now, but they’re going to have to improve that at some point because as these other teams get closer, and they did get a lot closer this weekend – granted, there’s the caveat that Mercedes hasn’t brought their first proper big upgrade package, that’s coming down the road – but if they continue to be this close, Kimi is not going to be able to kind of rely on the car pace advantage that they’ve got seemingly at the moment to make up for those bad starts.”
This weekend was the first time Mercedes failed to win this year after the team didn’t bring any substantial upgrades to Miami, compared to heavily upgraded cars for McLaren and Ferrari who made up the podium.
Antonelli still won the grand prix, but the margin for recovery is already thinning.
A lack of battery power cost him at the Melbourne opener, while in Japan he suffered from wheelspin. The Miami Sprint brought yet another sluggish getaway, and while team chief Toto Wolff has diverted the blame away from his driver for this, it’s becoming a pattern. “That was not an easy race at all but I’m so happy we were able to bring the victory home. My start wasn’t as bad as in the Sprint, but we still lost a position. I then lost a place to Lando before the Safety Car, but we were able to fight back. Our pace was strong, I was able to stay close, and then the team did a brilliant job with the strategy. The undercut worked out just about perfectly and, despite the McLaren coming out just ahead, we were able to get past with our tyres being up to temperature. “Despite our great start to the season, we are not getting ahead of ourselves. This is just the beginning of the season and there is a long year ahead. We are working super hard and the team is doing an incredible job at the moment. Without all the men and women at Brackley and Brixworth we wouldn’t be in this position. We’re going to continue to work hard, bring performance to the track, and aim for another good weekend in Canada.” Hinchcliffe continued, comparing Antonelli to Norris just two years ago who struggled with his own race starts: “You just see that growth. That’s very impressive. How he’s handling questions about the start thing, that’s very impressive. We kind of were relating it to Lando two years ago, seven pole positions without leading lap one sort of thing, right? “‘Oh, Lando doesn’t know how to start either, right?’ He’s dealing with a similar kind of situation and kind of in a similar way. And at some point, he’s going to get it and then we’re going to stop talking about it because he’ll probably never make that mistake again or never have issues off the start again.” Norris, of course, went on to win the world championship. The maturity of Antonelli is clearly there, but the field is closing, with McLaren and Ferrari both showing strong race pace – the latter especially, while Mercedes hold its back for Montreal.The Problem Runs Deeper Than Driver Error