Antonelli confirms the Mercedes trick: “At first you ask yourself: ‘But why do I have to lift my foot off the accelerator?’, but then…”

Mercedes, there’s the trick At Silverstone, Mercedes asked its qualifying drivers to lift their foot near the finish line, as part of making better use of electric power on the challenging English track. We pointed this out for Friday’s SQ3, but it also happened during Saturday’s Q3, both with Andrea Kimi Antonelli (around 1:30 in the video below) and with George Russell.
This is a particularly complex tactical trick to explain, which allows the Mercedes W17 to squeeze the battery more, almost to the final line and then suddenly turn off the electrical supply, with the driver lifting his foot off the accelerator. Antonelli confirms: it is a deliberate action After taking the beautiful pole position at the British Grand Prix, Andrea Kimi Antonelli was asked to comment on the difficulty of taking his foot off the accelerator when he has a straight line to attack.
Responding, the Italian simultaneously confirmed the entire reconstruction that emerged in the last few hours of the Mercedes ‘trick’, particular but – we reiterate – adhering to the regulations. “It wasn’t easy, in Q3 I think I did it,” said Antonelli, continuing: “It’s certainly complicated because sometimes you have to drive this power unit in a way that seems a little unnatural. Sometimes you accelerate later, so at high speed you maintain a higher speed. This way you can lose a bit of speed at the exit, but then you recover it because, by delaying the acceleration point, you get more energy even a little further along the straight.” Antonelli in his sincerity underlined the strangeness of having to adapt to this solution: “It is certainly complicated and the work on the simulator was extremely crucial, to make sure that this kind of thing can become natural. At the beginning you ask yourself: ‘But why do I have to take my foot off the accelerator?’. So sometimes it is complicated, but with the team we prepared a lot and this thing has become a sort of second skin.”

Automobile Magazine – Formula1 English, News

2026-07-05 05:00:00