Racing
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Mercedes has confirmed that Formula 1 championship leader Kimi Antonelli will sit out first practice for the Barcelona Grand Prix, with reserve driver Frederik Vesti taking over the W17 before Antonelli returns for FP2 and the rest of the weekend.
The move comes as Mercedes fulfills one of its mandatory young-driver practice appearances under the 2026 regulations, which require each team to field a rookie in four FP1 sessions across the season. In Barcelona, that means the points leader will spend the opening 60 minutes on the pit wall rather than in the car.
That is a notable choice given Antonelli’s form coming into the seventh round. The 19-year-old arrives at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya with 156 points, 66 clear of Lewis Hamilton, after five straight wins. He also heads to Spain off the back of his Monaco victory, where he became the youngest winner of that Grand Prix.
The FP1 switch leaves Antonelli with one fewer practice session than teammate George Russell as Mercedes begins its weekend, even while managing the car of the driver leading both the drivers’ championship and the team’s 244-point constructors’ campaign. It also underlines that the session is not simply a box-ticking exercise for Mercedes, which is using track time to feed its ongoing work on the W17.
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said in the team’s weekend preview that Vesti had earned the outing through his contribution behind the scenes. Vesti, Wolff said, “has played an important role in our development work on the W17 and has helped us understand how to get more out of the package.”
Wolff added that the Barcelona session gives Mercedes a useful crossover between simulator work and live running. “This session is a good opportunity for him to connect the simulator work with the real car, and for us to gather useful data again while we continue working on improvements,” he said.
For Vesti, it will be his first outing in the 2026 Mercedes and his first chance this season to put that simulator preparation into the car on a grand prix weekend. The 24-year-old Dane said he had “been waiting for that since the beginning of the year” and that he would work closely with the team throughout the weekend.
Antonelli will be back in the cockpit from second practice onward, but Mercedes’ decision means the early part of its Barcelona build-up will be shaped by development priorities as much as by preparation for the championship leader’s next race.