Antonelli admits Mercedes might be 'missing something' with Bahrain GP upgrades

F1's youngest ever championship leader will start P3 in Sunday's race, bumped up a place after Isack Hadjar's power-unit related grid penalty, while his Mercedes teammate George Russell suffered a poor Qualifying result in P8.

Team principal Toto Wolff has also expressed confusion with Mercedes' lack of pace to pole-sitter Verstappen, claiming that after anticipating a 0.3s gain in Sepang with the new upgrades, the Silver Arrows have gone "three, four or five tenths backwards."

"Something else is going on, and we have to understand," Wolff said. "This is now working through the data and putting our heads together, because we still believe that the upgrade works. We just need to understand why not here."

Despite a costly Q2 mistake, Antonelli conceded Verstappen was simply too quick for Mercedes during Saturday's action, and was asked whether he could be certain the new upgrades have delivered. While the high tyre degradation in Sepang is certainly a factor, the 20-year-old said the Silver Arrows may not have a proper read on the upgrades until the Singaporean GP next weekend.

Speaking to media, including GPblog, Antonelli said: "That's the question we'll try to to answer as quickly as possible because the team has done a tremendous job on bringing this upgrade. I mean, the whole year, whenever we went on tracks like this with very open tarmac, we've always struggled."

Given the different challenges and conditions between qualifying and race running in Sepang, Antonelli was then asked how hopeful he could be starting from P3 on Sunday, with the young Italian highlighting a strong showing from Red Bull and Ferrari in terms of race pace.

"I think [in] this race, race pace is more important," Antonelli said. "I think we have a good opportunity tomorrow starting on the clean side, but I still believe that Red Bull still has the average on pace, and Ferrari is very close, but we'll do our best.