Kimi Antonelli lost more than a race in Baku. He lost, for the first time in six weekends, to his own Mercedes teammate.

Speaking in the Sepang paddock ahead of Sunday’s race, the 20-year-old Italian told Sky Sports his weekend in Azerbaijan had come apart from the first practice run.

“FP1 I did three laps and then missed the half of FP2. In FP3, I was getting to the rhythm. And then in qualifying, that Q1 one lap was actually okay. But I did a mistake, and then again you re-enter in the bad loop.”

A hydraulics problem killed most of Friday, a Q1 crash pinned him to 16th on the grid, and he clawed his way to fifth on Sunday while Russell converted pole into what Sky Sports called his best weekend of the season.

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“Then in the race, I didn’t have the confidence, and I just drove 80 per cent the whole time.”

His verdict on his own driving was blunter still.

“He’s always been my rival. But I’ll make sure next week I re-establish the order and just make sure that I will be back at my usual level because this weekend I was driving more like my grandma, so it wasn’t the usual Kimi.”

Sixty-six points, eight races left

Even after Baku, the maths tilt sharply Antonelli’s way. He leads Russell by 66 points with eight rounds still to run, and Russell’s stated game plan, as he put it to reporters via AFP, is to try to prevail at every one of them.

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Max Verstappen is the second Mercedes-adjacent problem. He finished second in Baku, close enough behind Russell that Toto Wolff’s team cannot spend the run-in only watching each other.

A track no one has fresh data on

The Malaysian round is a rescue job. Sepang was slotted onto the calendar in the summer after the Bahrain Grand Prix was rehoused there, following the cancellation of the April date because of the war in Iran. The event still officially runs as the Bahrain Grand Prix, with Bahrain keeping the commercial rights.

Formula 1 has not raced at the 5.5km circuit since 2017. Antonelli was 11 that day. Cars, tyres and power units have all changed generation in the years since.

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur said the old data his engineers have is “practically irrelevant” and that “everything has changed: tyres, engines and chassis are all completely different”, but he promised Ferrari would bring upgrades and “continue to push until the last corner”.

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Two drivers on the current grid have won at Sepang before: Verstappen, who took the last visit in 2017 for Red Bull, and Fernando Alonso, who arrives in Malaysia hunting a record-equalling fourth Sepang win. Antonelli, chasing what would be Italy’s first Formula 1 World Championship since Alberto Ascari in 1953, turns up as blind as most of the field.

Lights out at Sepang is on Sunday.

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