Kimi Antonelli was penalized, but he had made it clear: “I gave up.”
Kimi Antonelli, like Lewis Hamilton, was penalized after qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix. Yet the Bologna native driving for Mercedes, the leader of the F1 Drivers’ Championship, was convinced he had complied with the rules. This is clear from his comments at the end of the day at the Hungaroring, made before the FIA’s decision to demote him from fourth to seventh on the grid. He now finds himself behind even his teammate George Russell, who was sidelined by a serious engine failure.
“My lap could have been good enough for third place,” Antonelli told ‘Sky Sport’. “Verstappen was stopped in the last corner, so I eased off. Besides, they waved the yellow flag just as I was entering the corner, and that distracted me. I lost a lot of time on the track—it’s a shame because the session had already been complicated enough. In fact, even if I hadn’t slowed down, I would still have been a tenth of a second slower than Norris.” The stewards deemed his reduction in speed insufficient, leading them to impose a three-position grid penalty.
The final starting grid thus places Norris on pole, followed by Charles Leclerc, Piastri, and Verstappen, with Hamilton fifth and Russell sixth after a difficult session that was cut short by a technical issue with his car. Antonelli, penalized for failing to respect the yellow flag during his flying lap, will start seventh. Hamilton, as is well known, also suffered a grid drop—from second to fifth—for hindering Oscar Piastri on his fast lap. The Australian McLaren driver made no secret of his disappointment, shaking his fist at the Ferrari driver, while Hamilton immediately apologized with an eloquent hand gesture. “At the end of my lap, I may have hindered someone,” the seven-time world champion admitted immediately after qualifying, almost foreshadowing the decision that would come more than two hours later.
The championship context makes Sunday’s race particularly delicate for Antonelli. The young Mercedes driver arrives at the Hungaroring with 204 points in the overall standings, holding a 45-point lead over Hamilton and a 50-point lead over Russell. A lead built race by race, culminating in victory at the recent Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps, where the driver from Bologna overtook Leclerc with ten laps to go after briefly losing the lead during a Virtual Safety Car period. Joining him on the podium at Spa were the Monegasque driver and Max Verstappen, while Hamilton finished fourth after serving a five-second penalty for contact with Russell at the start.
Just on the eve of the Hungarian weekend, Antonelli had cautiously rejected the role of clear favorite: “Our rivals are competitive,” he said at Media Day. “Ferrari has updated the rear wing; McLaren has a new underbody. We’re confident, but we’re not starting as winners: we need to find the right setup if we want to compete for the win.” These are the words of a driver who, despite his young age, has shown surprising maturity this season in handling the pressures of the World Championship—a quality that even the American press has begun to recognize: “The Athletic,” the sports platform of “The New York Times,” dedicated a lengthy editorial to him after his triumph at Spa, describing him as a model of “calm and stability” and a credible candidate to become the youngest world champion in history.
