Welcome to my first-ever post. They can only get better from here!
In this article, I wanted to take a look at the qualifying lap differences between Russell and Antonelli at the Belgian GP. After qualifying, Russell was fairly vocal about his lack of straight-line speed, but Toto Wolff made some interesting comments about how his drivers' differing driving styles were leading to different deployment patterns. He suggested that Russell's additional corner corrections might consume more battery and contribute to the straight-line deficit.
So I thought that'd be a great question to test.
The data
I don't think I'll include these caveats at the start of every blog post. They'll go in the About section. But this is my first blog post, so they go in this one!
I'm using the FastF1 data library to do this analysis, which provides all telemetry made publicly available during live timing sessions. Unfortunately, this doesn't include:
- Battery deployment or level
- Recharge information
- Steering angle
The sampling is done about every 0.2 s. Generally, if you spot something strange (e.g., a sudden short loss of speed), it can be explained as a telemetry glitch. I'll go into this more at some point.
I'll write another blog post soon and see if we can create some sort of proxy for how much deployment is happening based on acceleration.
With that said, let's dive in and see what we can suss out.
Raw sector times
Sector 1 was effectively equal between the two drivers, with the main difference appearing in S3:
- Russell gained 0.024 s in S1.
- Antonelli gained:
- 0.165 s in S2.
- 0.367 s in S3.
This S3 gap is probably why Russell says things like "There were four tenths on the straights in Q3". But I think it's not as simple as he makes it out to be. Let's start by looking at the relative apex speeds:
Apex speeds
The charts show:
The early part of the lap is mixed:
- Russell faster at the T3/T4 and T5/T6 apexes.
- T2, T8, T12 and T13 are effectively tied within 1 km/h tolerance.
Antonelli becomes stronger across the middle and final parts of the lap:
- T9: +3.0 km/h.
- T10: +3.9 km/h.
- T11: +3.0 km/h.
The clearest sequence is T14-T17:
- T14: +7.9 km/h.
- T15: +2.8 km/h.
- T16: +4.4 km/h.
- T17: +5.3 km/h.
Apex speed itself does not indicate smoothness, but Antonelli is clearly gaining time in the corners through S2 and S3.
Let's avoid drawing too many conclusions at this point and move on to looking at Sector 3 in more detail.
Turn 12 onwards
Turns 12-17 cover the fast chicane of Les Fagnes. Campus is then the last corner with any real braking before the flat-out run through Stavelot and Blanchimont.
The throttle/brake trace shows Russell braking slightly later for T12, but Antonelli gets on the power earlier and gets his time back through T13. He carries more speed through T14 and gets on the power earlier. Finally, at Stavelot, both drivers seem to have very similar apex speeds.
But then, around 200 m after T15, Antonelli appears to gain up to 5 km/h or more on Russell through Blanchimont and towards the chicane. This is clearer when plotting the relative speed between Antonelli and Russell from T15 onwards:
I've included in this plot the relative speeds over the Kemmel straight, which are almost identical between the drivers, with Antonelli maybe having a slight advantage.
It's almost certain that the cars will be set up slightly differently. If the drivers were identical, you'd think that a car set up for faster cornering would lose time on the straights. This year in particular, if you need to use more battery to keep speed up in the corners, there will be pain to come on the straights.
But here, Antonelli is able both to corner faster through S3 and to gain time on the straight. Potentially, we're reaching a conclusion where Russell is right to feel aggrieved.
I'll include one last plot:
All of the time gained by Antonelli over the lap comes from about halfway through the lap, when the fast corners begin. In fact, only 0.2 s is gained from around T15 to the end of the lap.
Throttle analysis
I have plans to do a more in-depth analysis on the 2026 cars soon. In particular, I want to see if we can look at the acceleration over a lap and find some proxy measure for deployment modes.
However, for this lap, I figured I would just work out how much time each driver spent on the throttle. The idea was that if Russell was on the throttle more throughout the lap than Antonelli, that could potentially explain the loss of speed in S3.
Interestingly, Russell uses more throttle around T5, T6 and T7. Then, from T9 to T14, he uses slightly more full throttle than Antonelli despite being slower in this section.
I wouldn't suggest at this point that full throttle means deployment. We don't yet know Mercedes' deployment strategy. One potential hypothesis is that Russell used more deployment in these corners and, as a result, was slower on the straight later, but we will need to develop our deployment proxy models to test this further!
Conclusions
Russell said after qualifying at Spa that the Mercedes team had a look at his data after Silverstone and concluded that it wasn't his driving style that caused the issues he had there.
We have to assume that Mercedes both (a) have more data than I do (obviously) and (b) know what they are doing. We might also assume that (c) Russell isn't going to admit that his driving style is holding him back.
Regardless, we've looked at the data from the lap and can see:
- Antonelli has a pace advantage through all the corners from T8 (Rivage) onwards and is faster at every apex apart from the chicane.
- There is an unexplained pace deficit of 0.2 s on the straight in the final sector from T15 to the chicane.
In the case of this lap, I can see two potential conclusions:
- The way Antonelli carried speed through the corners resulted in him having slightly more battery to deploy on that final straight.
- Russell had an issue with his car that caused the loss of speed through all the corners, plus the straight.
Come back in a few days when I've had a chance to look at the deployment analysis and whether we can do more there!