Mercedes identify potential cause for 'unusual' Kimi Antonelli penalty

Mercedes believes it has uncovered the reason behind Kimi Antonelli's false start and time penalty in the Las Vegas Grand Prix.

Antonelli was handed a five-second penalty in Nevada after being adjudged to have moved before the lights went out as he crept forward. 

Using a one-stop strategy, he climbed to fourth on the road, but dropped to fifth once the penalty was applied, although he was promoted back to third once Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were disqualified.

In the aftermath, Mercedes explained it was going to seek answers from the FIA about why the penalty had been handed down, with trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin detailing the sequence of events the team now believes led to the penalty.

"That was for what you call a jump start, but when people talk about a jump start, they're normally thinking the drivers drop the clutch before the lights have gone out to get a bit of a run on the competition," Shovlin explained.

"This was quite different and quite unusual. If you watch the video, what you see is before the lights go out, the car rolls about two centimetres forward very, very slowly, but Kimi doesn't drop the clutch; he's actually got the clutch fully pulled.

"Now, we think what happened is that at that point, the car started to roll was the point he took his foot off the brakes. So, as they get ready for the start, [drivers] remove their foot, and that's only a second or so before the lights actually go out. 

"And whether it's the vibration of the car or there might have been some torque in the driveline, but it certainly wasn't Kimi and the clutch that made it creep forward. 

"Now, the FIA systems are very sensitive. They can pick up on that small amount of motion, and you know we when we eventually check the video with time to look at it properly, you could see this very, very subtle movement.

"So it was unfortunate for him to pick up that penalty. He was doing everything correctly in terms of what we tell him to do, but we just need to work out how to make sure that doesn't happen again."