Antonelli and Russell to use same package at COTA as championship leader gets first match point

At the Singapore Grand Prix, only had a single one of its new front wings ready. It was used by Kimi Antonelli in FP1, in order to gather data. "We only had one there, so we'd rushed it through production. But obviously if you've only got one example, you run the risk of pit lane starts if you damage things. And so the balance of risk didn't favour running it for qualifying or in sprint or the main race, but certainly doing the learning was really, really useful," Mercedes' Deputy Team Principal, Bradley Lord, said in The Nu Silver Arrows Radio Show.

It was a Sprint weekend in Singapore, so Mercedes wanted to try out as many things as possible during the only 60 minutes of practice the team had at its disposal.

Simone Resta, Mercedes Deputy Technical Director explained: "You have normally two set of tyres and then you need to learn exactly on a green track where the car is. And then, then you have a different package than your teammate. And also, as we wanted to accelerate the learning, we even did a test with the new front wing during FP1. So in such a short time, we changed many things because our objective was to try to learn as quick as possible for the short and medium term. Wanted to check the new front wing.

At the Circuit of the Americas, both Antonelli and George Russell can use the team's newest package, as the team aims to capitalize on its learnings in Singapore.

Lord added: "It's worth saying it was worth our while running that front wing in FP1 as well, because we learned things that will mean we can hopefully hit the ground running in a better way when we get to Austin with both cars in the updated config and running that kit, running the new front wing and able to hopefully make the most of that higher peak performance in a way we haven't been able to do as effectively so far."

This weekend, Antonelli can secure the 2026 drivers' title. He is currently 102 points ahead of his teammate Russell and needs to extend that gap to 125 points to clinch the championship at COTA.