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As unfortunate as Russell was, it shouldn’t take anything away from the quality of Antonelli’s weekend.
He was more comfortable in the car than Russell, the pace came easily to him, and he never seemed to win a race, even when VSC gifted Leclerc the lead.
Mercedes’ battery deployment issue also affected him in the first round – a fact that Verstappen seemed to miss on the approach to the Eau Rouge, rather than Antonelli’s smart driving, letting the Red Bull stream up the straight.
“It was crazy,” Antonelli said. “To be honest, I was confused about what was happening because Max had come flying in before Eau Rouge, and then I passed him back.
“But I saw Charles was about to come with me and I said: ‘What’s going on?’ I had no clue. I was trying to hold the position on the track, and I saw a lot of cars coming, so I was looking in the mirror the whole time. But it was a crazy start. Fortunately, we got away clean. “
These issues, given the complexity of this year’s engines, are almost 50/50 split between internal combustion and electric power, and are becoming commonplace for most teams in terms of inherent energy hunger.
Antonelli: “Sometimes you don’t understand. I had the same thing in Australia, for example, it can be a little bit difficult to drive, but sometimes the system does something a little different.
“You have to appreciate the work of the team, because the system is very complicated. Of course, they are trying to make things a little easier, but sometimes it is difficult to make it perfect.
“Also with driving sometimes, especially on tracks like this, which require a lot of energy, if you start driving in a different way, it’s a bit crazy for the system. So, it’s difficult.
“But I have to agree that it was a bit of a problem for George this weekend, I’m sure it will be fixed for Budapest.”
Antonelli made a pit stop while VSC was deployed to help Marshall recover some debris from the track.
This was the second time this had happened. The first was too early for Antonelli to stop, and this allowed the second Ferrari to stop Leclerc and still rejoin ahead of Antonelli, as a driver loses half the race time when a VSC comes out and cars are restricted to slow lap times for safety reasons.
Although Antonelli was able to steadily build an advantage in the early laps and then slowly reel in Leclerc to reclaim the lead with relative ease, the pace was perhaps not as strong as everyone expected.
In this, at least, there is some hope of a competitive race to come.
Lando Norris, whose McLaren team will have the first of two upgrade packages for Hungary, said: “Maybe they were a bit surprised that they weren’t too strong.”
“They still won the race, so it’s not like they had a bad weekend. But we were definitely closer than we expected today, and that’s a good sign.”
