Antonelli has been hit with a grid penalty for his incident with Verstappen
Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli has been handed a three-place grid penalty for the next weekend’s British Grand Prix after the stewards found him at fault for a collision with Max Verstappen on Lap 1 in Austria.
Despite his promising pace on Friday, Andrea Kimi Antonelli started the Austrian Grand Prix from P9 on the grid. The Italian displayed strong performance in qualifying, but he was unable to complete his last push lap in Q3 due to yellow flags brought out for a spin of Pierre Gasly.
Although he hoped for better fortunes in the Spielberg race, his afternoon ended after just three corners. The Bologna-born driver locked up the rear brakes of his Mercedes into Turn 3, and was unable to decelerate enough to avoid the back of Max Verstappen’s RB21.
With both cars having suffered significant damage, both Antonelli and Verstappen were forced to retire from the Austrian Grand Prix.
Both drivers were summoned to the stewards over the incident, where the verdict was that Antonelli was “fully at fault”, and the Italian was hit with a three-place grid penalty for the upcoming British Grand Prix as well as two penalty points on his licence.
A document released following the stewards’ meeting states: “In the hearing the driver admitted that he made a mistake as he locked up the rear wheels while using his regular braking point, but also pointed out that he needed to avoid a collision with Car 30 [Liam Lawson] in front of him and released the brakes for a short period of time to do so.
“Taking evasive action led to the car having less grip on the dirty inside line and therefore he was not able to decelerate the car in a way to avoid the collision with Car 1.
“The stewards determine that, although the incident happened in Lap 1, no other cars influenced the incident and the driver of Car 12 is fully at fault. Therefore the more lenient approach to judging Lap 1 incidents has not been applied in this case.
“However, they also acknowledge that the incident was not a blatant attempt to dive into the corner but rather a result of the evasive action after locking up.”
