Kimi Antonelli’s world is not the only one that has changed. Imagine being George Russell, the man who would be king when he won the season opener in Australia, watching his Mercedes teammate ascend the throne in Mexico.
As Russell said a week ago in Austin, Formula One is first place or nothing. When P1 is claimed by your teammate, the sense of failure is acute. When the gap to said teammate is as devastating as that to Antonelli, it can be career-defining.
Russell has been emphatically outdriven by the youngest world champion in the history of the sport. Lewis Hamilton lost a world title to his Mercedes teammate in 2016, but it was fag-paper close and so demanding of winner Nico Rosberg that the new world champion never raced again.
The outcome did not break Hamilton. It broke Rosberg. Hamilton, who suffered that year the same mechanical bad luck as Russell has had this, powered back, adding four world titles to the three he had already won.
Russell does not have that CV. It might be that Antonelli is in the same divine category as Hamilton and enters the pantheon as one of the greats. No shame losing to a generational talent, except that was the vision for Russell when he blazed through the junior formulae to make his F1 debut a month past his 21st birthday.
At 28, the future he envisaged is being claimed by the remarkable 20-year-old from the heart of Ferrari country. It wasn’t even close, Antonelli systematically breaking Russell’s heart race by race after Melbourne.
It all seemed so different in March. Victory around Albert Park appeared to lay the foundation for Russell’s own coronation. The result proved anomalous. Antonelli’s feel for a radically changed car, powered by new engine regulations that so befuddled the rest of the field, carried him to victory in the next five races, a record sequence following a maiden win.
By the time Russell won again in Austria, where a misjudgment over yellow flags in qualifying cost Antonelli pole, his equilibrium was too disturbed to stitch his season back together.
Another hot-shoe error by Antonelli in qualifying at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix allowed Russell to claim a third race victory from pole. But by then Antonelli’s eight wins rendered Russell’s success perfunctory. Indeed you wonder how Russell might ever come back from this.
Providence has not favoured him. A technical issue in qualifying for the second race in China left him stuck in first gear. His engine failed while leading in Canada. Monaco was a kaleidoscope of pit-lane cock-ups and penalties.
Another DNF followed at Spa following a collision with Hamilton. Engine failure ended his race at the re-assigned Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia. More significant, however, has been his inability to extract anything like the same performance as Antonelli from the season’s dominant car.
Russell was required to unlearn the habits of the prior regulatory period where the cars relied on “ground effect” aerodynamics. Antonelli was comfortably second best in his rookie season having little experience of those unique aero conditions.
But in this new, more conventional aero era, Antonelli took one race to find the new car’s measure. He is on average two kilometres per hour quicker than Russell through the corners and has mastered energy deployment on the straights without compromising the battery.
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When the car is in the sweet spot, Russell is competitive. But the sensitivities under these regs are such that the sweet spot is more elusive. Antonelli is just better when the balance of the car is harder to find.
The United States GP felt like the season in microcosm. While mystified Russell bemoaned a lack of pace and grip, Antonelli powered to his ninth victory of the season, leaving his bemused teammate more than a minute behind.
In a sport where difference is measured in fractions of a second, a minute is a country mile. Thus has Antonelli pumped Russell mercilessly, leaving his reputation diminished and career prospects cruelly downgraded.
The handshake they shared in acknowledged the transfer of power: Russell, head bowed, utterly defeated, paying tribute to the new king of Formula One. No wonder he couldn’t face the Antonelli after-party.