Antonelli tops Monaco FP3 to leave Wolff 'very positively surprised' ahead of qualifying

Kimi Antonelli topped the timesheet in third practice for the Monaco Grand Prix on Saturday, clocking a 1m12.720s to beat Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc by 0.327 seconds and hand Mercedes a timely boost after their rivals had controlled the opening two sessions.

The result drew an enthusiastic response from Mercedes CEO and team principal Toto Wolff. “That was a good session for Kimi, fast. Now we just need to continue to build for qualifying,” Wolff said after FP3. “Leclerc’s lap before he made a mistake in Turn 10 was there or thereabouts, so it’s still not going to be a walk in the park, but we are very positively surprised.”

Team-mate George Russell finished fourth, 0.763 seconds adrift of Antonelli, and Wolff acknowledged the Briton had not yet found the same level of confidence in the car. “I think with George, you can never write him off. He’s going to look at the data — he still didn’t feel 100 per cent confident or comfortable in the car in the way that Kimi did, so I’m quite keen to see how the two are going to be in qualifying.”

Russell arrives in Monaco carrying the disappointment of the Canadian Grand Prix, where he led from pole position before retiring with a mechanical failure on his Mercedes. Wolff confirmed the team has traced the problem but stopped short of declaring it fully understood. “We have identified the failure — we know what it is, but we are not 100% sure why it happened. But that’s at least a containment,” he said. “We are all over it on the engine side and I’m sure this is part of the learning to make it very robust.”

With Ferrari having set the pace across Friday, Antonelli’s FP3 benchmark raises the prospect of a genuine three-way fight between Mercedes and the Scuderia when qualifying gets underway on Saturday afternoon at the Circuit de Monaco.