Antonelli sees Mercedes upgrade progress in Austin, but says work remains

Kimi Antonelli said Mercedes made progress with its recent upgrade package during Friday practice at the United States Grand Prix. He felt better in FP2 than in FP1 and called the afternoon a step forward, but said the team still had work to do to find the W17’s right operating window.

The package, introduced in Malaysia two races earlier, raised the W17’s performance ceiling but also made it more peaky and harder to optimise. Mercedes brought a new front-wing option to Austin. After the drivers used different specifications in Singapore, Antonelli and George Russell were both on the latest version in Austin. Antonelli said Mercedes had analysed data since Singapore and that running the same package on both cars would help the team test different approaches and understand it better.

Mercedes struggled with locking in FP1, a major limitation for both single-lap work and long runs, trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin said. After repositioning the cars for the afternoon, he said, balance issues eased, the car became more predictable and lap times improved.

Antonelli was 0.042 seconds behind FP2 leader Charles Leclerc. Russell finished FP2 fifth, seven tenths behind, after failing to get a clean lap: track limits spoiled his first soft-tyre attempt, and a large snap through the fastest section of the Esses ruined his second. Initial long-run readings put the four leading teams close, with Red Bull and Ferrari perhaps slightly ahead of Mercedes and McLaren.