Antonelli wowed with his immediate pace on his grand prix weekend debut in Monza, but pushed beyond the limits at the Parabolica and crashed out after five laps.
“It was definitely much better than Monza,” Antonelli said. “I drove much calmer today, I didn’t want to take any risks. I just wanted to do a clean session, just to get some laps, understand the car a bit more and understand the tyres.
“I think overall it was pretty decent. Of course, I could feel I wasn’t on the limit, but just because it was my choice. I just wanted to get a clean session overall. I was able to pick up the pace quite quickly. It was good like this.”
Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes F1 W15
Photo by: Dom Romney / Motorsport Images
Antonelli picked up some floor damage coming from a metal piece of debris, which forced Mercedes to repair the damage before Hamilton returned to the car for Friday afternoon’s FP2.
“To be honest, I didn’t really see it,” Antonelli commented. “It was a shame because I got quite a bit of floor damage from it. It was quite big damage, so of course it wasn’t ideal. But still, I managed to get a few laps in the bag.”
In FP2 Russell suffered a heavy crash after his car bottomed out over the kerbs in the Esses, which sent his W15 into a dramatic spin into the barriers and prompted a much bigger repair job for the Mercedes team.
“I don’t really know what happened, the car just started bouncing on the ground, and before I had a chance to even catch it, the car was already spinning,” Russell explained after the session.
“A lot of work for the guys tonight again, seems like it’s one thing after another at the moment, but it’s frustrating as in FP1 we were really strong, really fast. Obviously we’ve missed out on laps, FP3 is going to be important, just hope we can get the car fixed.”
