Kimi Antonelli’s Bahrain running might have looked like a straightforward, tidy introduction to Mercedes life under the 2026 rules, but the rookie’s already got his eye on where the new era can bite back: battery management at Melbourne.
Albert Park has been trending faster since its 2021 facelift, and this year it arrives with an extra layer of jeopardy. With the new power units splitting output 50/50 between internal combustion and electrical energy, the battery isn’t just a performance add-on — it’s half the lap time. Get the deployment wrong and you won’t merely be leaving a couple of tenths on the table; you can end up compromising the whole rhythm of the lap, especially on a circuit that doesn’t hand you many obvious “reset” moments.
Antonelli’s view is blunt: the system is in for “quite a bit of a shock” when the season opens in Australia.
He’s coming off two productive tests in Bahrain, where Mercedes banked mileage and, by paddock consensus, looked sharp. Antonelli’s only real blemish was a stoppage on the final day, pulling over after 49 laps at the Bahrain International Circuit. But in terms of understanding the car, Bahrain is a forgiving classroom — heavy braking zones, obvious harvesting opportunities, and six full days of testing to iterate through solutions.
Melbourne is the opposite kind of problem. It’s not that Albert Park is short on braking altogether, but the modern layout leans on long, committed full-throttle passages where the deployment curve can quickly become a headache. Antonelli pointed to the flat-out stretch from Turn 7 to Turn 11 as the sort of sequence that will stress the electrical side of the power unit, because the usual “stop-start” rhythm that makes battery strategy simple just isn’t there.
That’s why his immediate post-test plan is to disappear into the simulator and put in the unglamorous hours.
“I mean, definitely will do a lot,” Antonelli said of the sim work he’s got lined up before the Australian Grand Prix. “But it’s mainly to get the deployment right, because Melbourne is going to be a lot different than what we’ve experienced here. And for the battery, it’s going to be quite a bit of a shock.
“So, we just need to find the best deployment, and that’s why there will be a lot – well, for sure, for everyone, there will be a lot of sim work, just to get it right.”
There’s also a practical urgency that comes with a new car, a new power unit philosophy, and a race weekend that won’t wait for anyone. Teams had the luxury of time in Bahrain — six days to tune, compare runs, and build a library of options. Melbourne offers three practice sessions and then the gloves come off.
“Also here [in Bahrain], we had six days of testing, so plenty of time to tune it and to find the best way,” Antonelli added. “But in Melbourne, we’ve only got three practices, and then we’re into qualifying, so we just need to really be spot on from the first session.”
It’s the sort of comment that sounds routine until you consider what’s actually being asked of drivers in 2026. Managing deployment isn’t simply a matter of toggling a mode on a straight. It’s a corner-by-corner exercise in optimising charge and release while keeping the car balanced, the tyres alive, and the lap shape intact. And because the electrical contribution is so large, the penalty for being out of phase — arriving at a key straight without the energy you expected, or bleeding too much too early — is amplified.
For a rookie, that’s a lot of invisible workload to stack on top of the usual first-trip-to-a-new-season-opener pressures. The encouraging bit for Mercedes is that Antonelli is talking about it in the right way: not as an excuse to bank, but as a problem to solve early, with preparation rather than improvisation.
Mercedes heads into the new campaign widely regarded as a benchmark after the W17’s pace in testing caught the attention of rivals. But Melbourne will be an immediate reality check for everyone, because it’s the first time this new battery-heavy formula has to stand up to a high-speed street-style circuit with limited practice and no safety net.
Antonelli, at least, doesn’t sound like he’s expecting a gentle easing-in. He’s expecting a shock — and he’s trying to make sure he’s the one delivering it, not receiving it.
