Antonelli completes wet-tyre test outing at Silverstone

On the back of his remarkable performance at last weekend's Miami Grand Prix, Mercedes driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli was back in action this week, completing a test session with Pirelli at Silverstone.

Mercedes' Italian sensation secured his maiden F1 pole position for last weekend's Miami F1 Sprint. Although he encountered misfortunes during the 100km dash with a suboptimal strategy and a collision with Max Verstappen in the pit lane, he went on to display another impressive performance in the main qualifying session.

The Bologna-born driver qualified third on the grid for the Miami Grand Prix, and while he displayed strong pace during his first stint on the medium tyres, he lost out to his team-mate George Russell, who could capitalize on the virtual safety car period by completing a cheap pit stop.

Following the Miami weekend, Antonelli got behind the wheel of an F1 again as Formula One's sole tyre supplier Pirelli performed a 2026 tyres test session.

The Milan-based company noted that they worked on development of the Cinturato tyre range, the full wets and intermediates, which were first tested with McLaren back in January at Le Castellet’s Paul Ricard circuit.

For the Silverstone test, Mercedes brought a mule car based on the 2024 W15. While Antonelli was on track on Wednesday, his team-mate Russell took over on Thursday.

The test saw Mercedes use the 2.630 kilometre National track layout of the Silverstone circuit which was artificially watered using water trucks. Antonelli completed 103 laps, the quickest in a time of 47.560s. During the first part of the day, the work focussed on the intermediate tyres, before switching to extreme wets in the afternoon.