Racing
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Mercedes used a legal qualifying trick at Silverstone that had George Russell and Kimi Antonelli lift off just before the timing line, allowing the car to keep deploying the full 350kW for longer and sidestep the usual battery ramp-down penalty under Formula 1’s 2024 energy rules.
The tactic stood out immediately because drivers normally stay flat on the throttle to the line, but Mercedes had found a way to use a rule allowance that permits faster power reduction when the driver fully comes off the throttle. On fast straights such as Silverstone, battery deployment would otherwise have to taper away progressively, with no more than 50kW of reduction per second from the 350kW maximum. By timing the lift correctly, Mercedes could hold maximum deployment almost to the line and then cut it legally.
That made the move more than a visual quirk. The gain was estimated at around 0.05 seconds, enough to matter in modern qualifying, and it explained why rivals began digging through telemetry traces after sprint qualifying on Friday.
Mercedes had already chased a similar benefit earlier this season through the emergency MGU-K shutdown route, as Red Bull did too, but that avenue was closed after incidents around the Japan weekend when cars ran slowly or stopped. The FIA then made clear that shutdown procedure could only be used for genuine emergencies, forcing Mercedes to find a different answer for qualifying.
This one carried real risk. The driver had to lift before the battery reached 0%. If the battery emptied first and the MGU-K cut off instantly, the car would fall foul of the technical rules, with exclusion from qualifying and a start from the back of the grid described as the likely consequence.
Mercedes built a system around that risk. The team developed software tied to track position and battery state, added an audible in-ear warning to tell the drivers when to lift, and prepared the method in the simulator before the British Grand Prix. Russell and Antonelli then used it in both sprint qualifying and grand prix qualifying.
Antonelli said after qualifying that it “was not easy” and added that “with these power units it is always a bit complicated, because you sometimes have to drive in a way that doesn’t quite feel natural.”
The FIA is understood to be satisfied that the approach is legal, which is why the bigger story now is what comes next. Andrea Stella, McLaren team principal, said the team had been caught off guard when it first saw it. “As we saw it yesterday in Sprint Qualifying for the first time, when Antonelli did that, it surprised us a little because we had not discussed something like that,” Stella said after qualifying on Saturday. He added that he was “not even sure” whether it was available to McLaren as a Mercedes customer team.
With a clear lap-time benefit and no regulatory block for now, teams are expected to study whether they can reproduce the same effect at future events where it could pay off again, including circuits such as the Hungaroring.