Mercedes has revealed Andrea Kimi Antonelli came close to retiring from the Mexican Grand Prix.
The team discovered the new world champion’s car had developed a fault in its power unit in the final laps.Mercedes’ deputy team principal Bradley Lord described it as “a sign of the fact that this is Kimi’s year and things are rolling with him.”
“We got the car back after the race, took the floor off the bottom, [and found it was] covered in oil,” he told High Performance Racing. “Sump cracked.”
Antonelli was already detecting signs of trouble from his Mercedes power unit. “Kimi said he thinks about four laps from the end he could start to feel the engine just starting to struggle. So [he was] right on the edge of retirement [from] that race and yet it held together.”
The Mercedes driver lost almost two seconds on the final lap of the race, though he said that was because he was crying. He would still have clinched the title had his engine failed, but a retirement would have robbed him of the iconic photograph with Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton he wants to put on his wall.
Lord also shed more light on the loss of power George Russell suffered on the run to turn one at the start of the race, which allowed several of his rivals to overtake. “He’s taken the lion’s share of these technical problems and quirks and we had another one on Sunday,” said Lord.
“He was in prime position for going for the lead into turn one and then [has] a de-rate out of nowhere because of one of the complex bits of the energy rules mean he’s back in P5, P6 and caught up in the [mess] with Hadjar.
“It was a little bit like Spa, the start of the race there where he was so well positioned and then it just became that collision at turn four.”
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