Antonelli becomes youngest F1 championship leader with Japan win

Kimi Antonelli won the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka to become the youngest-ever F1 championship leader after consecutive victories for Mercedes.formula1
Defending champion Lando Norris finished fifth after McLaren installed his third and final permitted battery pack on Saturday, leaving him one failure from a grid penalty.yardbarker
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said the team hopes to repair the removed unit, as one of Norris’s three allowed batteries is already permanently lost from China.planetf1

Norris Faces Grid Penalty Risk After McLaren Battery Failures in Japan

Reigning Formula 1 world champion Lando Norris is now one battery failure away from a mandatory 10-place grid penalty after McLaren was forced to install his third and final permitted energy recovery system module ahead of FP3 at Sunday’s Japanese Grand Prix.

The battery swap came just two weeks after both Norris and teammate Oscar Piastri suffered a double non-start at the Chinese Grand Prix due to separate electrical failures in their Mercedes-supplied power units. An investigation by Mercedes High Performance Powertrains confirmed that Norris’s battery in Shanghai was “bricked” by a software glitch, rendering it permanently unusable, while Piastri’s issue stemmed from a faulty auxiliary hardware component and was repairable.f1i

Fresh Failure at Suzuka

McLaren’s problems followed Norris to Suzuka. After missing much of Friday’s running due to electrical and hydraulic issues, his team discovered another battery fault on startup ahead of FP3 on Saturday, forcing the installation of his third and final ERS module.yardbarker

Team principal Andrea Stella explained that while the latest issue involved the same component type, it was different in nature from the China failure. “The only way was to remove the part to investigate it,” Stella said after qualifying. “Once investigated, we realised that it will take time to attempt a repair, so we needed to give Lando the possibility to do the session, so we introduced a third battery pack”.planetf1

Under the 2026 regulations, drivers are normally limited to two batteries per season, though an extra unit is permitted this year as teams adapt to the new power unit rules. Any further replacement beyond the three allowed would trigger an automatic 10-place grid penalty.racingnews365

Repair Hopes and Race Outcome

Stella expressed cautious optimism that the battery removed on Saturday could be repaired, which would preserve Norris’s component pool for the remaining 19 races. “We hope that we are going to be able to repair this battery pack and that we have not lost another component,” he said, noting that “the one that had the fault in China, that one is lost”.planetf1

Despite the disrupted weekend, Norris qualified fifth and finished the race in the same position, crossing the line 23 seconds behind winner Kimi Antonelli, who claimed his second consecutive victory for Mercedes to take the championship lead. Sky Sports F1 reporter Ted Kravitz noted during the broadcast that Mercedes engineers were seen visiting the McLaren garage to monitor the battery situation closely.planetf1