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Kimi Antonelli was worried about losing the lead of the Monaco GP to Lewis Hamilton when the race restarted after a late red flag.
“Big time I was frustrated,” Antonelli, who had built up a lead over 30 seconds before the stoppages, said in the post-race press conference. “Because Lewis was starting next to me this time and knowing how good they start, I was like, ‘Oh man.'”
With the aid of some wheelspin for Hamilton, Antonelli defended his lead and comfortably saw out the victory. Realistically, his job was done after the restart given the difficulty of overtaking around Monaco.
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Lewis Hamilton: Ferrari’s starts were a difference maker, ‘then they changed some rules’
While Antonelli was worried, Hamilton’s optimism about race starts has waned. The Ferrari was a ‘rocket launcher’ earlier in the year, to use the words of David Croft, but their advantage is less pronounced.
In Australia, Charles Leclerc stormed into the lead from the second row, a feat Hamilton repeated a week later in China. Leclerc then climbed up to second when the lights went out at Suzuka, following Oscar Piastri past the two Mercedes.
While Leclerc grabbed the lead again in Miami, he was helped by lock-ups for front-row starters Kimi Antonelli and Max Verstappen. Ferrari’s starts in Canada and Monaco were relatively ordinary.
There have been a number of rule changes affecting race starts since testing. First, the FIA lengthened the build-up procedure to give teams more time to prepare their turbos.
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Then, in the gap between Japan and Miami, they introduced a low-power start detection mode, which ensures a minimum level of acceleration in the interests of safety, and equalised formation lap energy allocations across the field.
Asked before the Monaco GP if there was more ‘tension’ at the start this year, Hamilton said: “No. At the beginning, it was because we had taken decisions to benefit our starts and the others hadn’t.
“Then they changed some rules… so now everyone gets similar starts.”
As Hamilton alluded to, Ferrari deliberately opted for a smaller turbo, sacrificing some grunt for improved traction and starts. But recent rule changes, albeit driven by safety concerns, have somewhat nullified that advantage.
The starts were effectively Ferrari’s joker against Mercedes, preventing the Silver Arrows from pulling away at the outset. Now they have lost it.
Amid the overarching focus on the hybrid rules, specifically the power split between the combustion engine and the battery, these under-the-radar rule changes are having a significant bearing on the action at the front.
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