Mercedes explain Kimi Antonelli's British GP race-ruining failure
Kimi Antonelli looked set to challenge for the race win before he was forced to stop for a makeshift repair at the Formula 1 British Grand Prix
Mercedes has revealed details of the failure that ended Kimi Antonelli's pursuit of victory at the British Grand Prix on Sunday.
Antonelli was on the charge when, on lap 41, he slowed suddenly on the Hanger Straight, and reported what he believed to be suspension damage. At that point, he had closed to within five seconds of race leader Charles Leclerc.
The Italian pulled into the pits, where the team had a look around the suspension and changed his tyres before sending him out again. But he would return to the pits again two laps later after feeling no improvement with the car.
On this stop, the team pulled a broken wheel shield from the car, which replays showed had broken as he ran over the kerbs on the exit of Copse.
"A lot of you are asking for information about what happened to Kimi's car in the race," said deputy technical director Simone Resta on a Mercedes video.
"It was simply a front brake duct failure of a part of the brake duct that is called the wheel shield. And essentially, 10 laps to the end, we had a failure, and the component got loose and started to interact quite a lot with the suspension behaviour and the steering of the car.
"The car became very, very lazy and almost undriveable. But Kimi was really, really resilient. He wanted to keep the car on track and give himself the best chance to score points. Now, the car, as I said, was very undriveable, and that's why Kimi went off track a few times.
"Unfortunately, that cost him a five-second penalty at the end of the race. Very unfortunate on that component, but another strong sign of performance and resilience from our young driver."
Crash.net understands that there was no issue with Antonelli's car aside from the broken wheel shield.
Antonelli completed the race but took the flag in ninth place, with his post-race time penalty relegating him to 15th place. As a result of team-mate George Russell finishing in second place, Antonelli's championship lead was reduced to 25 points.
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Sam joined Crash.net in February 2026 with extensive experience in motorsport media, having covered numerous championships around the world.
