Andrea Kimi Antonelli again lost positions at the start of the Miami sprint race, but team principal Toto Wolff said the issue was not the driver’s fault.
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The championship leader has dropped places on all five race starts so far this season, making him one of the slower starters in 2026 heading into the Miami event.
Despite Miami having a relatively short run to the first corner, Antonelli lost two places from his front-row grid position. The young Mercedes driver insisted his start procedure was correct.
“The start, to be fair, on procedure was all good,” Antonelli said. “So we need to check what happened because the [clutch] drop was good. On my side, I think for once I did everything right. It was a shame to, again, have a really bad start because then it just compromised the race.”
Wolff confirmed the team identified the problem as an issue on their side rather than a driver error. “If you have a bad getaway, which wasn’t at all Kimi’s fault but was an issue on our side, it is going to be difficult to fight back,” he said.
Statistically, today was actually Antonelli’s second-best start of the year: he lost one place at the Chinese Grand Prix start, while he suffered heavier losses elsewhere — seven places in the sprint at Shanghai and five places at the Australian and Japanese Grands Prix.
During the Miami race Antonelli also exceeded track limits four times, earning a five-second penalty that dropped him from fourth to sixth in the final classification. He left the track twice at turn five and twice at turn 11. Only two other drivers, Isack Hadjar and Lance Stroll, recorded more than one track limits infringement, with two each.
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