Victory in the Belgian Grand Prix could not have been sweeter for Kimi Antonelli, but it has cruelly exposed something of an inexplicable faultline within his Mercedes team. The Italian teenager’s joy stood in stark contrast to his teammate George Russell, who was knocked out on lap one after a clash with Lewis Hamilton, for which Russell squarely blamed his team and what he sees as a weakness with his car they seem unable to rectify.
Hamilton had clipped Russell at Les Combes, which the Mercedes driver considered a racing incident. Russell, however, was vehement in his belief that he should not have been competing for a corner with the Ferrari and that he had been forced to do so because he was once more enduring a lack of straightline speed. It is a deficit that notably is not affecting Antonelli, giving the conspiracy theorists a field day but more importantly posing a conundrum for Mercedes that they apparently cannot quite fathom.
