Toto Wolff left red-faced after Kimi Antonelli's stunning US GP Pole lap
Photo: Race Pictures
Henry Eccles is a freelance Formula 1 journalist for GPblog, covering breaking news, live race blogs, and features across the F1 calendar. Since joining in 2026, he has produced high-volume reporting on the sport’s biggest stories, alongside feature pieces including analysis and historical content.
Toto Wolff has admitted Mercedes were not expecting Kimi Antonelli to secure Pole Position at the US GP, with the Austrian joking the Silver Arrows' guests for the weekend will think he is "totally incompetent" over that judgement.
Mercedes have appeared out of sorts during recent weekends, ever since the introduction of a major upgrade package at the Bahrain GP in Malaysia. With the German team hoping to learn more about their new upgrades - with next season particularly in mind - they were not necessarily favourites for Austin Pole, with Red Bull and also Ferrari impressing during Free Practice.
As he has done for much of the season, however, Antonelli stunned the rest of the grid to secure Pole on Saturday, 0.179s ahead of Red Bull's Max Verstappen. On the first weekend in which Antonelli can become the youngest-ever F1 world champion, Wolff admitted even he was surprised by the 20-year-old's performance.
Speaking to Sky Sports F1, Wolff said: "It’s still a little bit of a surprise. We had a guest in the garage that asked me, ‘What do you expect from qualifying?’ And I said something between P3 and P5. So the guy thinks I’m totally incompetent with my judgement, but we didn’t see that lap coming.”
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Mercedes 'still on the edge,' says Wolff
Photo: Race Pictures
Explaining exactly why Mercedes did not foresee a front-row place in Austin, Wolff highlighted a narrow operating window for the W17, with the difficulty of handling the upgraded car seen through the P6 finish for Antonelli's teammate George Russell.
"I think the car is still very much on the edge," Wolff added. "That if you manage to land it well and drive it in the right way, you have this kind of performance that’s in there. That is really encouraging to see that it can do it.
“But you can see on the other car with George, if you are not hitting that peak completely, that you fall out of it, and then you’re having three to four tenths deficit. So we want to have a car that’s fast but also predictable, which at the moment it isn’t.”
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Track limits have also been a concern for Mercedes, particularly for 20-year-old Antonelli, who came close to getting a five-second penalty at the last race in Singapore. During Friday's action in Austin, 207 track limit violations were also recorded in total.
Wolff revisits Antonelli pillow joke
With Antonelli crucially avoiding any punishments during Qualifying, Wolff again joked about putting a pillow under the Italian's seat so that he could see the corners, having said it to his driver in his post-Singapore radio message. "It’s a secret gift we have for him,” Wolff quipped.
“No, the truth is he’s pushing the limits so much, and it’s almost like he goes into this autopilot mode of what can I extract from the car, and then he slides over those limits," Wolff added, before revealing conversations he has had on the matter with Antonelli's father, Marco.
"I’ve been joking with his dad during the races, like how is this even possible? He said it's beyond incomprehensible for his father too, but I'd rather slow down a race horse than try to accelerate a donkey because that's not possible."
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