{"id":733470,"date":"2026-06-13T06:38:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T06:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/733470\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T06:38:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T06:38:12","slug":"why-kimi-antonelli-was-off-the-pace-in-f1-barcelona-catalunya-gp-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/733470\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Kimi Antonelli was off the pace in F1 Barcelona-Catalunya GP practice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Formula 1 championship leader Kimi Antonelli was unusually off the pace as he finished fifth during second practice at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

Antonelli<\/a>, the winner of the past five races and dominant early championship leader, trailed FP2 pacesetter Lando Norris <\/a>by almost six-tenths of a second as he could only manage fifth in the timesheet.<\/p>\n

The 19-year-old Italian was also outpaced by Mercedes <\/a>team-mate George Russell<\/a>, who topped opening practice in Barcelona, by nearly the same margin.<\/p>\n

\"Antonelli <\/p>\n

Antonelli was one of seven drivers to sit out of FP1<\/p>\n

Antonelli sat out the first hour of running with Mercedes among seven teams to field rookies as part of their mandated yearly running in FP1, and appeared to struggle to get up to speed on his return to the W17.<\/p>\n

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After second practice, Antonelli explained that a combination of tyre overheating and balance issues prevented him from putting in a competitive lap during the soft tyre qualifying simulation runs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a bit tricky over a single lap,\u201d Antonelli said. \u201cThe window is so small and the tyres are overheating quite a lot. Just trying to find the best balance.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith only one lap for each set, it\u2019s always difficult but I think overall, there\u2019s still quite a bit of work to do. But I\u2019m still confident ahead of tomorrow. The long run was good in the practice, so that\u2019s a positive.<\/p>\n

\u201cDefinitely looking forward to tomorrow and looking forward to the changes that we\u2019re going to make.\u201d<\/p>\n

Antonelli, who hit traffic on his fastest lap, was also heard complaining about his brakes during FP2 and reported over team radio that his \u201cbrake pedal feels horrible\u201d and was \u201cso long\u201d.<\/p>\n

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\"Antonelli <\/p>\n

Antonelli ended Friday practice only fifth fastest<\/p>\n

Asked about his brake problem, Antonelli said: \u201cOn a Friday we usually use a really used set, so definitely tomorrow is not going to be a problem as we\u2019ll put a new set [on the car].<\/p>\n

\u201cDefinitely George has looked very quick, McLaren look very quick as well. So it\u2019s not going to be easy, but we will try to understand from tonight\u2019s work and try to be ready for tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Antonelli is 66 points clear of Ferrari\u2019s Lewis Hamilton<\/a> in the championship, while Russell is 68 points behind.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Subscribe to our F1 Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Formula 1 championship leader Kimi Antonelli was unusually off the pace as he finished fifth during second practice…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":733471,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[12295,64,63,817,3875,945,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-733470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-andrea-kimi-antonelli","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-george-russell","tag-mercedes","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=733470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/733471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}