Antonelli's home heartbreak revealed: This is why the Mercedes driver retired in Imola

The Italian caused a full safety car after pulling off and retiring at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix. It was a tough weekend for the second-placed team in the constructors standings. As well as Antonelli's retirement, George Russell could only manage seventh place after starting in third.

The trackside engineering director at the Brackley-based squad revealed the problem in-depth on the post-race Akkodis debrief. "Well, we haven't got completely to the bottom of it, but it was relatively easy to at least work out which faults were causing the issue," the British engineer began.

The 18-year-old had a tough weekend all around. Home fans in Imola were left disappointed when Antonelli was dumped out of qualifying in Q2 along with both Ferraris.

Shovlin continued: "Now we can run routines that allow us to recalibrate those (sensors) live while we're driving, but ultimately, it's a big safety issue if the throttle is malfunctioning.

"So, the thing that stopped him was actually the car's own programme deciding that there was enough going wrong here that it was going to shut down that throttle signal, and that was obviously what brought the car to a halt," he revealed.

According to Shovlin, the issue was terminal and would've caused a retirement for Antonelli at one point in the race. "Now, with the fault that we had, we weren't going to make the end of the race anyway, so we'd always err on the side of caution. And as I said, we've identified the assembly that's at fault. That came back overnight with us."

In the factory at Brackley, measures were immediately taken to discover what happened and ensure that there would be no repeat at the upcoming Monaco Grand Prix this weekend. Despite this, Mercedes may have to make design changes to ensure that this issue doesn't happen again in the future.