Suspicious Kimi Antonelli fires ‘sandbagging’ accusation at Ferrari after F1 Austrian GP turnaround

Andrea Kimi Antonelli has accused Formula 1 rival Ferrari of “definitely sandbagging” after completing an impressive turnaround at the Austrian Grand Prix. 

Ferrari lagged behind both Mercedes and McLaren during Friday’s two practice sessions in Spielberg, while Antonelli topped both FP1 and FP2 by an impressive buffer. 

Charles Leclerc declared Ferrari was “far away” after a “difficult” start to the weekend at the Red Bull Ring, despite the Italian team handing Mercedes a shock first defeat of the season last time out in Barcelona and deploying its first ADUO-influenced engine upgrade in Austria. 

Come qualifying, it was a different story, with Ferrari emerging as Mercedes’ biggest rivals for pole position, which was taken in controversial last-ditch circumstances by George Russell.

Russell ultimately denied Leclerc and Ferrari team-mate Lewis Hamilton by over two-tenths of a second as he secured what is considered to be a crucial pole for the Austrian Grand Prix. 

Antonelli was left skeptical of Ferrari’s step forward overnight and claimed the Scuderia had been deliberately hiding its true pace on Friday. 

“For sure, yesterday [Friday] they were sandbagging definitely, so I mean for sure their pace is going to be much better and we saw how strong they were in Barcelona, so let’s see,” Antonelli told media including Crash.net. 

“It’s going to be, again, another race where you need to manage tyres and trying to extract the maximum out of it.”

Antonelli is aiming to make up early ground off the line, with Mercedes enjoying better starts of late. 

“Hopefully we can get a good start and yes, at the pace of course it would have been better to start in the front row, but there’s a lot to play for, so yeah, looking forward to that,” he added. 

Leclerc admitted he was puzzled but positively surprised by Ferrari’s pace in qualifying. 

"It’s very strange because yesterday was a very tough day for the team," Leclerc said. "We were struggling a lot as a team and today we took a big step forward. We did not expect to be in front of the McLarens particularly and close to Mercedes, so that’s a good surprise.

"We changed quite a lot, actually. Not big steps, but a little bit everywhere. It ended up being quite a big difference.

"Then for the race in itself, I think we did a step forward with the car for tomorrow. Whether this will be enough to challenge Mercedes, I doubt so. But if there’s an opportunity, I will do everything to take it."