The Brackley garage experienced the absolute extremes of motorsport at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodríguez. While the team successfully crowned the youngest world drivers’ champion in Formula 1 history on Sunday, the engineering brass was simultaneously forced to publicly apologise to the other side of the garage for a mechanical failure.

Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin was quick to praise his newly minted champion following the Mexico City Grand Prix, highlighting a brutally effective tyre strategy. The 20-year-old Italian executed a massive opening stint, nursing the soft compound rubber well past the 40-lap mark to create a significant strategic offset against the rest of the grid.

“Congratulations to Kimi on his first world championship,” Shovlin remarked after the race. “It was quite an eventful race, but he did a really good job managing the Soft tyre in the first stint and was able to run it beyond 40 laps.”

Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes

Photo by: Bryn Lennon / Formula 1 via Getty Images

While the Lap 45 red flag wiped out that hard-earned tyre advantage, the young prodigy did not flinch on the restart. Dropping the hammer from fourth place, he executed a clinical pass on Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc to snatch a podium finish behind race winner Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton, sealing the 2026 crown.

“He restarted P4 but made a very good move on Leclerc to get back into the podium positions and drove a very controlled race from there to take P3 and the title,” the engineering boss explained. “He has driven superbly across the season and the way he handled the race today, with everything that was at stake, was another demonstration of the progress he has made.”

Taking the blame for Lap 1

While the championship celebrations kicked off on one side of the paddock, Shovlin offered a blunt assessment of the mechanical blunder that ruined George Russell’s afternoon.

Launching from second on the grid, the British driver suffered a battery deployment failure before ever reaching the first braking zone. The sudden lack of electrical energy caused him to bleed positions on the massive main straight, completely destroying his race strategy and ultimately leading to a desperate, clumsy 10-second penalty for spinning Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar at Turn 6.

George Russell, Mercedes

Photo by: Alastair Staley / LAT Images via Getty Images

“George had a difficult afternoon through no fault of his own,” Shovlin admitted. “The deployment issue on the run to Turn 1 cost him several positions and put him on the back foot from the very start. From there, he was having to recover in traffic, and the contact with Hadjar and subsequent penalty made that task harder.”

Despite the early spin, the time penalty, and the heavy traffic, the veteran charger kept his composure to salvage a hard-fought sixth-place finish. Still, the Mercedes pitwall refused to make excuses for the electrical glitch.

“It’s frustrating because we didn’t give him the start to the race that he needed, and that is on us as a team,” the trackside director confessed.

The constructors’ battle

With the drivers’ crown firmly secured, the German manufacturer has zero intention of lifting off the throttle as the paddock packs up for Interlagos.

“We have plenty to focus on as we head to Brazil,” Shovlin concluded. “We want to add the Constructors’ Championship to the Drivers’ title, and we know we still must deliver the performances to do that. We’ll enjoy today, then turn our attention very quickly to the next race.”

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– The Motorsport.com Team