Antonelli within 0.042s of FP2 lead as Mercedes finds rhythm with upgraded W17 in Austin

Kimi Antonelli ended Friday practice at the United States Grand Prix just 0.042 seconds behind FP2 pacesetter Charles Leclerc, offering Mercedes encouragement that its recent upgrade package is beginning to unlock genuine performance at Circuit of the Americas in Austin.

Mercedes arrived in Texas with a new front wing option designed to complement the significant upgrade package first introduced two races ago in Malaysia. That initial step raised the W17’s performance ceiling but also made the car more peaky and harder to place in its optimal operating window — a challenge that persisted through a difficult first practice session on Friday.

The team repositioned both cars ahead of the afternoon session, and the improvement was immediate. Antonelli climbed to second overall in FP2, while the broader picture from long-run data suggested Red Bull and Ferrari hold a slight edge over Mercedes and McLaren heading into the weekend.

“I felt better in the car compared to FP1,” Antonelli said. “There is still lots of work to do, but it was a good step forward and now we’ll try to improve even further. Having both cars on the same package helps, because we can try lots of different stuff and we can have a better understanding of this package.”

Both Antonelli and George Russell are now running the latest specification after the squad split packages in Singapore, and Antonelli believes the additional data gathered since that race is helping the team decode what the upgrade actually needs.

“Since Singapore we were able to analyse the data and understand better what this package needs,” he said. “We’re still trying to find how to put the car in the right window, but we’ve been taking steps forward.”

Trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin acknowledged the difficult start to the day. “We didn’t have a good first session. We were looking to explore a wider set-up window with the update package on both cars, but we were struggling with locking, which was a big limitation in both our single-lap work and the long runs,” he said. “We repositioned the cars going into the afternoon session and that seems to have put us in a better place. We had fewer balance issues, the car was more predictable, and the lap times improved as a result.”

Russell endured a frustrating afternoon, finishing fifth and seven tenths adrift of Leclerc after his first soft-tyre run was deleted for exceeding track limits and his second was compromised by a significant snap through the high-speed Esses section of COTA.

With Pirelli’s soft compound under heavy stress through the circuit’s demanding final sector, tyre management is expected to be a defining factor in Saturday qualifying.