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Mercedes has been fined by the Australian Grand Prix stewards following a bizarre incident during the top-10 shoot-out for the Australian Grand Prix involving Kimi Antonelli.

Antonelli was fortunate to be taking part in qualifying at Melbourne's Albert Park following a horrific smash in final practice that left Mercedes with a mountain to climb to repair the W17.

Remarkably, the young Italian made it out on track during a red-flag period in Q1 following a crash involving Max Verstappen in his Red Bull.

In Q3, however, Mercedes sent out Antonelli with a cooling fan still attached to the right-hand side of his car, which split open out of Turn 1. One half of it was struck by Lando Norris' McLaren, shattering into hundreds of pieces, damaging the car.

Following a stewards' investigation into an unsafe release, they have fined Mercedes €7,500, taking into account the team's 'legacy' issue hanging over it in earlier repairing the car.

A stewards' statement read: " Car 12 (Antonelli) was released from its garage during the session with a duct cooling fan still attached on the right side of the car.

"The fan assembly disconnected from the duct of Car 12 as it negotiated Turn 1, split apart and one section of it bounced off the track onto the gravel at the exit.

"Another section of the fan assembly dislodged onto the track at Turn 2 and was later struck by the front wing and tyre of another car causing debris to be strewn over the track, damage to the front wing of the other car and the session had to be red flagged to remove the debris.

"The team explained that an incident in an earlier session in which car 12 had sustained significant damage meant that the division of labour within the team had to be changed to repair the damage within a short time frame.

"Usually, a separate team member would have responsibility for inserting and removing each fan but the need to address legacy issues from the earlier incident during the session meant that the team member responsible for the fan on that side of the car was occupied on another task and the removal of the fan before the car was released from the garage was missed.

"The team (and the Driver) were unaware that the fan had not been removed until the incident was noted by race control."

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