Kimi Antonelli Still Doesn’t Trust Ferrari at Silverstone
Despite winning the Sprint Race and securing a historic pole position, Kimi Antonelli is still wary. The Mercedes driver, in fact, beat Lewis Hamilton and the Ferraris in general during both the morning and afternoon sessions at Silverstone. Ahead of the British Grand Prix, however, he remains on high alert and admits he’s still concerned about the Maranello reds.
The battle with Hamilton in the Sprint Race—decided only by his pass on the ninth lap—is something Antonelli doesn’t want to underestimate. “Lewis was very fast; keeping up with the Ferraris won’t be easy,” the Mercedes driver told ‘Sky Sport’. “I’ll need to get off to a good start, but also maintain a steady pace right from the start so I can get out of the overtaking zone as soon as possible. But it won’t be easy, especially if there are the same gusts of wind that we had today at Silverstone.”
The numbers behind Antonelli’s pole position, however, speak for themselves: 1 minute, 28 seconds, and 111 thousandths, with a 175-thousandths lead over Charles Leclerc and 347 thousandths over Hamilton. This result carries significant historical weight: it had been since 1953—when Alberto Ascari achieved the feat—that an Italian driver had started from pole position at Silverstone. A record that adds further significance to an already extraordinary day for the driver from Bologna.
Leclerc himself, who will start from second on the grid, has had a mixed weekend so far. The Monegasque driver had openly admitted his difficulties with the SF-26 after Friday’s Sprint qualifying, explaining the gap between him and Hamilton: “For a while now, I’ve realized I don’t have the same ease I had in 2025 with last year’s car. Even when I push to the limit and put it all together, we’re talking about tenths of a second: Lewis is more often able to exploit 100% of the car’s potential.” In the afternoon, however, the driver from the Principality chose a different path from his teammate’s, changing the car’s setup and refusing to adapt his driving style to Hamilton’s: “I could have completely changed my driving style and tried to do what Hamilton does. Because it’s pretty obvious that, in general, it’s working. However, I decided to stick to my own path, trying to find a way to adapt the Ferrari to my driving style.” A choice that proved successful, at least in qualifying.
Hamilton, on the other hand, struck a more cautious tone ahead of Sunday’s race. The seven-time world champion, who had dominated Friday’s Sprint qualifying and was in high spirits in front of his home crowd, opted to keep a low profile: “I don’t want to come across as pessimistic, but the Mercedes are much faster than us. Even if we at Ferrari manage to keep up with them in the very first laps, they’ll pull away over the race distance. Compared to yesterday, it seems to me we’ve taken a step backward; I don’t feel the car quite right anymore, especially in terms of balance. The rear end tends to slide out, and we’re not perfect under braking either.” Is this pre-race strategy or genuine concern? The answer will come from the track on Sunday afternoon.
In the background, the Silverstone weekend was also the scene of a heated exchange between the leaders of the two teams. Toto Wolff had publicly raised doubts about the compatibility of Ferrari’s updates with the budget cap limits: “We’re a bit surprised that Ferrari is able to introduce such substantial updates. In my opinion, they’ll run out of money soon. We can’t do that; we don’t have enough leeway under the spending cap.” A dig that was bluntly returned by team principal Vasseur: “When Red Bull or Mercedes develop something, they’re geniuses. When we do it, we’re cheating. I think we need to calm down a bit on this point.” This tense atmosphere adds spice to an already electrifying challenge, with Antonelli leading the World Championship with 179 points, 43 points ahead of George Russell and 47 ahead of Hamilton.
