SILVERSTONE, England -- In a not-so-alternate universe, Kimi Antonelli would have left Silverstone on Sunday with a winners' trophy and a lead of more than 50 points over Mercedes teammate George Russell in the drivers' championship.
Such an outcome would have represented a much fairer reflection of his efforts over the 52 laps of the British Grand Prix. But in the stark reality of Sunday evening, the Mercedes driver left the circuit with no points and no trophy.
As a result, Antonelli's once-comfortable championship lead has been slashed from 65 points following last month's Monaco Grand Prix, to just 25 in the space of three races.
Although far less convincingly than Antonelli -- particularly over the course of the first nine races of the season -- both Russell and Ferrari's Lewis Hamilton remain very much in contention for this year's title, with Sunday's race winner Charles Leclerc also providing a timely reminder of his ability to take points off all three drivers.
It begs the question of how the combination of F1's in-form driver and fastest car are not running away with the title. The answer, quite simply, is the increasingly patchy reliability of Mercedes, especially now that the team is regularly being pushed to the limit by its rivals in the pursuit of victory.
What went wrong for Antonelli
Antonelli was hunting down Leclerc's Ferrari when damage to part of his brake duct and wheel hub assembly limited his ability to turn the car and stripped it of downforce. Despite losing the lead from pole position with a slow getaway, Antonelli's underlying pace, combined with an offset tyre strategy to put him on fresher rubber at the end of the grand prix, meant Mercedes' race-predicting software was projecting he would overtake Leclerc for victory with six laps remaining.
As the 19-year-old lit up the timing screens, everything appeared to be going to plan.
Until it didn't.
On lap 41 of 52, Antonelli radioed his team to tell them something had broken on the front of his car, and over three laps -- which included two visits to the pits -- his race unraveled.
"There was something, like, fundamental that was broken," Antonelli said after the race. "We don't know if something else broke because by the loss it feels like it was more than just a wheel shield, but then of course the team will have more time to analyse it.
"It was a shame because we had a shot before the win today, I think we were going to do it."
Team principal Toto Wolff believes something became stuck in an incredibly sensitive part of the car.
"It looks like it was a brake duct," he said. "The cake tin [part of the wheel hub assembly] and wheel shield -- something got stuck in there and that's why it wasn't able to turn.
"I've seen the car, but it's not yet clear really what happened [to cause the failure]. We've got to take the whole car back to the factory in order to take it apart again to really see where it happened, how it happened, and why we have such severe consequences of maybe not being able to turn."
An initial pit stop for a new front wing failed to solve the issue, and it was only during a second stop that the problematic part was removed. By then, Antonelli had racked up enough track limit breaches to be hit with a five-second penalty, which dropped him out of ninth place when the race controversially finished under the safety car.
Wolff confirmed after the race that the team was considering its options in appealing the penalty, but also revealed he would have made a different decision.
"If it was only about me, I would have made the call [to park the car] ten laps to the end because of safety issues," Wolff said. "But then suspension looked OK -- that's the biggest issue -- and he was just basically surviving from left corner to left corner and saying that he could do that. If we're able to get rid of that penalty these two points could be crucial for the championship. We're definitely looking at a situation where we can avoid that penalty for track limits."
Can Russell and Hamilton really mount a challenge?
Antonelli's issue in Silverstone has raised fresh questions over Mercedes' reliability and the impact it might have on the title race. Two battery-related issues in Canada (for Russell) and Spain (for Antonelli) cost the team a combined 36 points earlier this season and followed a series of similar problems for Mercedes' engine customers -- notably McLaren and, to a lesser extent, Williams and Alpine -- at earlier races.
"Generally, we just had too many DNFs and lost two second places and now one victory," Wolff said Sunday. "Other than the top car that we have, and the great driving, that is the predominant issue.
"I think we are such a performance organization on the chassis and engine side, we want to squeeze everything out. But I'd rather dial back, a little bit, something that is really good, and fix some of the reliability gremlins, rather than running behind on performance.
"So far, we've won seven races out of nine. And I'd rather have this than slow and unreliable."
By contrast, Ferrari have had no major reliability issues, while simultaneously chipping away at Mercedes' early-season performance advantage. Leclerc's victory on Sunday was Ferrari's second in three races, with Hamilton's third place finish meaning his gap to Antonelli has been reduced to 32 points.
Although Antonelli still had the faster package at Silverstone, Ferrari is applying pressure that might just be forcing Mercedes out of its comfort zone.
"I think we came into the season knowing that we needed to level up in our processes and just how we executed on race weekends," Hamilton said Sunday. "Everyone back in the factory has worked so hard to bring this consistency, and that's really what I think ultimately is going to make the difference this year."
He also weighed in on Mercedes' issues: "You're seeing engines in general have had more issues this year than they normally would have, and I don't know what the situation is on the battery side for George and for Kimi, but at some point there must be a penalty [for using too many power unit components].
"It's going to be key for us just holding onto this, maximizing the points, executing to the best of our ability, even when it's the case that we can't win."
Meanwhile, Russell has taken 43 points out of Antonelli's championship lead in the last three races as his early-season bad luck seems to have leveled out, relative to his teammate. But Russell knows there's no guarantee the trend will continue, and admits his underlying pace is still shy of where it needs to be.
"He has done a better job than me this year to this point, so he deserves to be ahead of me," Russell said Sunday. "Whether it should be 25 points, whether it should be 10 points, whether it should be 35 points is a debate, but in that ballpark between.
"If I want to fight for the championship, the performances need to be better. I need to be better. I need to be working better with my team. We need to be maximising everything. We've got a close fight now with Ferrari, so it's not just Kimi and I -- Lewis is still very close. It needs to be improved."
As Antonelli reflects on the British Grand Prix race weekend over the coming days, his unquestionable performance advantage over his teammate and the Ferrari drivers will shine through. During Saturday's sprint race, he made the most of his blistering pace to pass Hamilton in the space of eight laps; Leclerc would have likely experienced a similar fate Sunday, had his car not failed him.
Events may have conspired against him at recent races, but the underlying momentum is still with Antonelli.
