Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff said a front-left wheel shield failure robbed Kimi Antonelli of what could have been an “epic battle” with Charles Leclerc for victory at the British Grand Prix, leaving the championship leader outside the points in P15 at Silverstone.

Antonelli started from pole position after backing up an impressive Sprint victory the day before, but lost the lead at the start as both Ferraris of Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton surged past. The young Italian recovered to catch and overtake Hamilton 11 laps later, then extended his first stint on medium tyres in a bid to undercut Leclerc’s advantage.

By the time Antonelli pitted for hard tyres, he emerged 7.5 seconds behind Leclerc but on significantly fresher rubber. He was closing rapidly — at times nearly two seconds per lap quicker — when the mechanical failure struck, leaving him unable to turn the car properly.

“He went out and he was almost two seconds faster for certain laps and would have caught Charles five, six laps to the end and would have seen an epic battle for the win,” Wolff told Sky Sports F1. “You never know in motor racing. But we had more than a handful of laps left with a second and a half in more performance.”

The damage forced Antonelli to pit twice as Mercedes attempted to fix the problem. A five-second time penalty for track limits violations — caused by his repeated excursions while fighting the handling issue — compounded the misery, dropping him to P15 and out of the points.

Wolff said the team suspects the failure originated at Turn 9 but has not yet completed a full investigation. “It’s on us. A car should not break and I don’t think the ride was worse than any laps before,” he said. “First it was blocked by a carbon part and then at the end when it was gone… we haven’t really done the postmortem yet on what happened. It’s just a theory that we have at the moment.”

The result marks the second non-score of Antonelli’s season, following a potential second-place finish in Barcelona that was also lost to a car issue. His championship lead over teammate George Russell — who finished second at his home race — has been trimmed to 25 points. Leclerc took the British Grand Prix victory.

Asked how Antonelli would recover from the setback, Wolff acknowledged the difficulty. “It’s difficult to know. That would have been an epic end of the race,” he told F1 TV. “We would have caught Charles six laps to the end with a huge tyre offset. But, you know, it’s a mechanical sport. These things can happen.”