Join now and get your first month for just $1.<\/a><\/p>\nThe Italian teenager expertly overtook Hamilton in the sprint race, picking up eight championship points, before producing the fastest lap in qualifying to take pole position.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing is going to take the smile off his face today,\u201d David Croft said on Kayo Sports.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis has been a very satisfying Saturday for the championship leader.\u201d<\/p>\n
Martin Brundle added: \u201cHe\u2019s looking ever more comfortable in that role.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s impressive how he\u2019s calm and kills with a smile,\u201d Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a pleasure to watch. There\u2019s no mistakes, he\u2019s really performing, considering it\u2019s his second year, at such a high level. He doesn’t\u2019t show any weaknesses.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ferrari\u2019s Charles Leclerc was second fastest, while Hamilton and George Russell will start on the second row on the grid. <\/p>\n
McLaren was well off the pace as Ferrari looked the only team capable of challenging Mercedes for the race win. <\/p>\n
Lando Norris was third in the sprint while Australia\u2019s Oscar Piastri was seventh in the 17-lap dash.<\/p>\n
The Australian struggled for pace and qualified eighth for the main race, nearly a second slower than Antonelli. <\/p>\n
Piastri was summoned to the stewards following an incident in the pits where involving a near miss with Racing Bulls driver Arvid Lindblad ahead of their final flying laps in qualifying.<\/p>\n
Red Bull was fined 5,000 euros for Lindblad\u2019s unsafe release in the pits.<\/p>\n
The Aussie slammed on the brakes to avoid ramming into the back of Lindblad as the rookie came out of the garage.<\/p>\n
\u201cAh yep. It\u2019s a good thing my underwear bottoms are black today and not white,\u201d Piastri quipped to his engineer. <\/p>\n
As he struggled in qualifying, Piastri said on team radio \u201cI just have zero grip\u201d, while McLaren boss Zak Brown all but conceded the team was no chance of making the podium at Silverstone. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t seem to have it,\u201d Brown said. \u201cBoth drivers are complaining of a lot of lack of grip and not great balance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Martin Brundle said in commentary: \u201cMcLaren once again look very stiff with the vertical stiffness of the competition. It jumps about a bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJust struggled a lot with rear grip,\u201d Piastri said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe thought we made some pretty sensible changes in qualifying but they just didn\u2019t really have the impact we were hoping for.<\/p>\n
\u201cA bit of a surprise why it\u2019s been such a battle all weekend. I\u2019ve been battling with the balance of the car. We lack grip and downforce. This weekend it\u2019s been a pretty big handful to drive the car.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTrying to beat the Red Bulls is probably the main opportunity,\u201d Piastri added.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe we can beat the Ferraris, but I\u2019m not particularly optimistic. The first few laps of the sprint were chaos so hopefully we can get amongst it.\u201d<\/p>\n
George Russell Russell was nearly four tenths of a second slower than his younger teammate and his hopes of challenging for the championship appear to be fading as Antonelli\u2019s confidence continues to grow.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a big gap. Around any racetrack it\u2019s a big gap for a driver and that hurts when it\u2019s your teammate,\u201d 2009 world champion Jenson Button said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve all been there. He\u2019ll be scratching his head a little bit and trying to understand how Kimi\u2019s able to do that every time he gets in the car.\u201d <\/p>\n
Provisional British GP starting grid <\/p>\n
1st row: Kimi Antonelli, Charles Leclerc<\/p>\n
2nd row: Lewis Hamilton, George Russell<\/p>\n
3rd row: Isack Hadjar, Lando Norris<\/p>\n
4th row: Max Verstappen, Oscar Piastri<\/p>\n
5th row: Arvid Lindblad, Liam Lawson<\/p>\n
6th row: Gabriel Bortoleto, Pierre Gasly<\/p>\n
7th row: Nico Hulkenberg, Ollie Bearman<\/p>\n
8th row: Caros Sainz, Alex Albon<\/p>\n
9th row: Esteban Ocon, Valtteri Bottas<\/p>\n
10th row: Franco Colapinto, Sergio Perez<\/p>\n
11th row: Lance Stroll, Fernando Alonso<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kimi Antonelli has claimed pole position for the British Grand Prix and extended his lead in the championship…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":779901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,277557,85],"class_list":["post-779900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-ncaeditorialkayoprogram","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779900","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=779900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/779901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=779900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=779900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=779900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}