Photo: RacePictures

Antonelli reveals the W17 ‘weak point’ where Mercedes lag behind Ferrari

13:19, 20 Feb

Updated: 15:28, 20 Feb

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byTobia Elia

Kimi Antonelli has spoken about the technical issues that affected him during the two Bahrain testing sessions.

“It hasn't been the smoothest of testing for me here in Bahrain. At least it's better than what I did on the road”

- Kimi Antonelli

The Italian driver’s morning was cut short midway through the session due to a technical issue that sidelined his W17, forcing him to end the run after completing just 49 laps.

More broadly, Antonelli has been unfortunate to be the one repeatedly hit by reliability problems, as also shown by the significant time he lost during last week’s opening test session.

Speaking in today's press conference, Antonelli said: “It hasn't been the smoothest of testing for me here in Bahrain. At least it's better than what I did on the road. It's all about testing and it's really important to fix it now and to experience these issues now to then be fine for the rest of the season.

“The team has been looking into it and already found the issue and also the way to fix it. So hopefully we'll be fine for Australia. But other than that, the car has felt pretty good. To be fair, we've done a lot of work, setup work, and the car is giving good feelings.”

Kimi Antonelli the loser of Bahrain 2026 test week on and off the track

Photo: Race Pictures

Antonelli also admitted that Mercedes have been struggling with race starts, an area where Ferrari appear to be excelling, as shown by simulations over the past few days.

“The Ferrari power look very strong on starts boday we made a lot of changes and at the end of the great the star fell a lot stronger. Obviously we couldn't test it properly on the grid, but it's been a bit of a weak point for us to be fair and it's just it's very complicated with the procedure. I just need to really get it right. There's a lot of work to do. But I think today we made a good step forward.”

Follow the final afternoon of Bahrain pre-season testing with GPblog

The morning session remained relatively calm, with little action on track apart from the technical issue that brought Antonelli’s W17 to a halt — the main talking point of the day so far.

All eyes now turn to the closing afternoon, as teams prepare to run their final race simulations while also shifting towards qualifying runs in conditions representative of those expected for April’s Grand Prix.

If you don’t want to miss a moment — follow every update live right here.

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