Mercedes must have had the Belgian Grand Prix circled in its calendar.

Fast, flowing and, more importantly, cool, it should have played to the Mercedes car’s long-held heavy preference for chilly climes.

Last year these qualities propelled the team to a one-two finish at Spa-Francorchamps, albeit before George Russell was disqualified for his car being underweight.

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Arriving back in 2025 was therefore a moment of optimism, particularly given the forecast on Sunday was for even colder conditions than in 2024.

But rather than basking in the glory of a big result, Russell ended up an anonymous fifth, more than half a minute adrift behind both McLarens and the lead Ferrari and Red Bull Racing cars — last of the frontrunning teams.

With the Hungarian Grand Prix looming this weekend, the team decamped for its Brackley base for a crunch debrief on Monday to try to stop the rot.

But the team’s problems extend beyond this one underwhelming performance.

The canary in the coalmine has been rookie driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli.

Antonelli, in the grips of a performance slump and confidence crisis, trailed home 16th in Belgium on his worst weekend as a Formula 1 driver.

He’s been quietly struggling for a long time now.

Belgium was the sixth event from the last seven at which the Italian teenager has failed to score.

It was the third time in that run of races that he’s failed to qualify inside the top 10. It was the first time since his debut in Melbourne that he’d been knocked out in Q1.

In fact at Spa-Francorchamps he suffered the ignominy of being knocked out in Q1 twice — once in sprint qualifying on Friday and again for the real deal on Saturday.

If Mercedes is listing, Antonelli looks like he’s drowning.

‘Miles earlier!’: Max on rolling start | 01:02

ROOKIE IN A RUT

Antonelli was always going to face a steep learning curve and plenty of potholes making his debut for a frontrunner like Mercedes alongside the experienced Russell.

His vital stats are illustrative of a driver not yet of the same grade.

Vital statistics

Qualifying result: 8.8 average

Qualifying head to head: Russell ahead 0-12

Qualifying differential: Russel ahead 4.3 places

Time differential: Russell ahead 0.324 seconds

Race result: 8.4 average

Race head to head: Russell ahead 0-9

Race differential: Russell ahead 4.2 places

Points: Russell ahead 63-157

The numbers above represent a comprehensive beating, albeit they’re not the most one-sided figures in Formula 1 — both Yuki Tsunoda and Lance Stroll have been belted more significantly by their teammates in qualifying and the races.

But for Antonelli these numbers represent a starting point — the results of his first steps in Formula 1 in only his fifth season racing cars.

It’s a set of numbers that obscures some of his remarkable highs. Despite qualifying 16th for his first race in Melbourne, he recovered to an extremely impressive fourth in treacherous conditions in the race.

He took his first pole — albeit for a sprint, so not counted in the official statistics nor those above — in Miami, and he claimed his maiden podium in Canada.

But the numbers also hide a negative trend.

Since the sport returned to Europe seven races ago his average qualifying deficit has increased marginally to 0.365 seconds and 5.0 places adrift, but his race performances have slipped precipitously.

He’s scored just 15 points to Russell’s 64 and is on average 6.7 places further back in the classification.

Some of those poor race results have been outside his control.

In Imola — his home race, after he’d admitted to overstretching himself in the build-up — his car was retired with a throttle problem. The next weekend in Spain, where he was in good form, he pulled off the track with a power unit failure.

In Austria, however, his took himself out of the race with a clumsy first-lap crash with Max Verstappen, for which he was slapped with a grid penalty for the following race in Silverstone, from which he also retired after being clobbered by an unsighted Isack Hadjar.

But the sum of those incidents is a lack of momentum at a time of the year he should be rising. These are tracks he’s raced at in his junior years. The flyaway rounds at either end of the calendar are less familiar.

The result in Belgium, therefore, is both predictable and alarming.

“Since the European season, I’ve been struggling to find confidence with the car,” he said after finishing 16th, per The Race.

“I feel like I’ve done a backwards step. It’s just a difficult moment for me. I feel like I have no confidence on pushing.

“[In qualifying] I tried to push a bit too much and then I spun, and it kind of hurts the confidence even more.”

Piastri picks off Norris in first lap | 00:32

WHERE IT’S ALL GONE WRONG

Confidence is crucial for rookies, and particularly for Antonelli, whose rise through the junior categories has been meteoric — he was racing in Formula 4 only three seasons ago.

Critical to confidence is that the driver feels they can have faith in the way their car behaves.

Antonelli isn’t feeling that faith. He hasn’t for some time.

“We know the limitation we have since quite a lot, but with the way I’m driving, I’m just increasing the problem, and that gives me even less confidence with the car,” he said.

“Compared to George I’m a bit more aggressive overall, I tend to try and carry a lot of speed into the corner.

“And with the limitation we have, I’m just increasing the problem. So on my side I’m trying to change a little bit the way I’m driving to also help the balance.

“Probably I’m trying to change the way I’m driving too much, and it feels like I’m not driving naturally. It’s very forced, the way I’m driving, and it’s just difficult.”

No driver has ever gone quicker by having to manually process the way they drive. It must be automatic, instinctive.

But it’s a revealing admission that helps to explain his sudden downturn. There appears to be no coincidence in the timing of his spiral.

Russell, for example, collected five podiums before the European season but has collected just one since — his victory in Canada, when Antonelli was also on the rostrum.

The move to Europe coincided with the FIA introducing a clampdown on flexible front wings, and Mercedes had long been thought to be among the teams exploiting flexibility most.

It’s not that having to change front wings has made the car instantly slower; it appears that Mercedes has struggled more to adapt to setting up the car without that additional flexibility, which helped to widen the set-up window.

You can see the step backwards in the average gap to pole.

In the races before the European season — Australia to Miami — Mercedes was close in the battle for second and within striking distance of McLaren.

Average gap to pole, rounds 1 to 6

1. McLaren: 0.015 seconds

2. Red Bull Racing: 0.190 seconds

3. Mercedes: 0.203 seconds

4. Ferrari: 0.407 seconds

Since the European summer, however, the drop-off has been stark.

Average gap to pole, rounds 7 to 13

1. McLaren: 0.046 seconds

2. Red Bull Racing: 0.353 seconds

3. Ferrari: 0.467 seconds

: 0.524 seconds

“The car of today and of the last handful of races is a car that is suffering from instability under braking in high speed and turning in high speed in a way that it wasn’t doing earlier in the year,” trackside engineering head Andrew Shovlin said.

“Earlier in the year it was a relatively easy car to set up, relatively easy to sort of pitch it up in qualifying for it to do okay.”

Analysing every team’s fastest qualifying lap as an indicator of pure pace shows this was Mercedes’s worst weekend of the year bar Monaco, though in Monte Carlo Antonelli crashed out of Q1 and Russell suffered a power unit failure in Q2, leaving both without a representative time.

Belgium stands alone as a representatively bad weekend.

The estimated development rate draws a line of best fit through each team’s average gap to pole throughout the season to come up with a trend.

Mercedes is faring among the worst on the grid.

Estimated development rate

1. Haas: improved by 0.365 seconds

2. Sauber: improved by 0.343 seconds

3. Aston Martin: improved by 0.033 seconds

4. Ferrari: degraded by 0.028 seconds

5. McLaren: degraded by 0.089 seconds

6. Red Bull Racing: degraded by 0.277 seconds

7. Alpine: degraded by 0.293 seconds

8. Racing Bulls: degraded by 0.406 seconds

9. Mercedes: degraded by 0.436 seconds

10. Williams: degraded by 0.461 seconds

Shovlin said it was incumbent on the team to ensure Antonelli doesn’t doubt his own abilities over the fault of the car.

“I hope he takes some solace from the fact that we tell him, and it’s demonstrably a fact, that we have taken the wrong steps with the car, making our team less competitive, and that he is paying the price for that, as is George,” he said.

“If the car isn’t where it needs to be, then it will be a struggle getting through the qualifying stages in your rookie season in F1.

“It’s utterly clear to all of us that the thing we need to do is make the car better, and then Kimi’s fortunes will reverse with that.

“Hopefully he’s listening to us as we say those reassuring words, because we absolutely know that he is putting in the effort on his side of that bargain.”

Rosberg grills Jos: “Now you’re quiet?” | 00:14

THE OUTLOOK

Antonelli was devastated to be knocked out in Q1 on Saturday and appeared emotional in some of his post-session interviews.

Combined with his run of poor form, Lewis Hamilton was sufficiently moved to pay his Mercedes successor a morale-boosting visit.

“I can’t imagine what it’s like at 18 – or try to imagine what it’s like at 18 – to do what he’s doing,” Hamilton told Sky Sports.

“He’s been doing fantastic. But to be thrown in at the deep end at 18 — he hadn’t even had his driving licence when he first started racing.

“I think it’s a lot on someone’s shoulders. He’s doing a great job, and he’s got a great group of people around him.

“I think you’ve just got to take it in your stride, which I think he is.”

Antonelli said he appreciated the visit.

“He was telling me to keep my head up and that it’s normal to have bad weekends and just to keep believing,” he said. “It was really nice.”

But how he responds — and how the team responds — will be crucial.

Antonelli has spoken before about the frenetic pace of the season leaving him without enough time to process his lessons. The Italian could certainly use the mid-season break to switch off and decompress after the opening 14 rounds of the year.

As an added boost, he could have his contract extension tied up on the way.

With Verstappen third in the championship, his contract exit clause is no longer thought valid. There should be no reason for Mercedes not to renew its line-up.

Confirmation would be mentally relieving, one imagines, given Antonelli is now being subjected to his first contract rumours, with some speculating Mercedes might consider loaning him to a smaller team for a few seasons to rebuild his confidence and establish himself before one day returning.

Those who see that as a viable option argue that Antonelli was promoted to Formula 1 too early.

Mercedes has some form in this. George Russell was farmed to Williams for three years before making his Mercedes debut.

Esteban Ocon, part of the Mercedes management program, was even retained as a reserve driver between stints at Force India and Renault.

But even if there was truth to the rumour Mercedes’s faith might be wavering, it’s not clear where Antonelli could go.

Williams has made clear it’s no longer the minnow team that would accept that sort of deal, and with Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz it has a powerful line-up ahead of what it hopes will be a big step forwards next season.

Alpine could perhaps be an option as a Mercedes customer next season, but the team doesn’t really want to field a rookie, and it would be somewhat embarrassing for the Renault factory team to take the cash to train up a driver for a competitor both on the track and on the road.

Mercedes always intended to promote Antonelli into the senior team. Hamilton’s contract was written to be deliberately breakable to have the elder statesman make way for the young talent. What wasn’t planned was how quickly that moment came.

The learning curve was always going to be steep, and a slump like this was eminently predictable for a driver so young and green, particularly given Mercedes now has a history of developing inconsistent cars under this regulation set.

There’s no doubting his potential, with an insanely good junior career replete with titles and a wise head on his young shoulders that allowed him to manage his rapid rise through the ranks perfectly.

But struggles like these are formative. If Mercedes can solve its own problems and end Antonelli’s confidence crisis, it might soon be able to take profit from its gamble on the teenage Italian this year in preparation for a bigger 2026 and beyond.