Kimi Antonelli reveals staggering scale of Mercedes damage after scary crash

Kimi Antonelli has revealed the staggering scale of damage his Mercedes received following his crash with Isack Hadjar at Silverstone.

On Lap 18 of the British Grand Prix, Hadjar was unsighted by heavy spray at Copse corner, and rammed into the back of Antonelli's car, destroying his own Racing Bulls machine.

Antonelli was swiftly told by engineer Peter Bonnington to retire, his fourth DNF in six races, with the Italian explaining that he was losing "100 points of downforce."

Lewis Hamilton lost around 20 points of downforce after striking a groundhog in Canada, which equated to about half-a-second per lap of performance lost, meaning Antonelli suffered losses of around 2.5s per lap.

"It just seems like everything is going wrong at the moment, and it is hard to find positives," Antonelli told media, including RacingNews365.

"We took the gamble on lap one, which didn't work because when I pitted, the VSC came out and I just could not build any temperature into the tyres, and went back onto the inters.

"Obviously, the visibility was extremely poor, and I don't know why, but I could feel it coming.

"In the moment, I was lucky to still keep it on track, because the hit was massive, but it is a shame to finish with another zero. 

"I lost like 100 points of downforce because the whole diffuser was gone, and it was extremely difficult to keep the car on track. 

"There was no one to blame, and when they told me it was going to restart, I was a bit unsure about that, because the visibility was still very poor at low speeds.

"So at higher speeds, it would have been even worse, and Isack was also just a passenger. I braked a bit earlier, just because it was so hard to see where the corner was and Isack couldn't see me."

For his part, Hadjar felt the crash was "quite predictable" owing to the low visibility, and that there was little point in restarting the race in such conditions.