{"id":85252,"date":"2026-07-18T17:48:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T15:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/mercedes-driver-kimi-antonelli-qualifies-on-pole-for-f1s-belgian-grand-prix\/"},"modified":"2026-07-18T17:48:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T15:48:00","slug":"mercedes-driver-kimi-antonelli-qualifies-on-pole-for-f1s-belgian-grand-prix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/mercedes-driver-kimi-antonelli-qualifies-on-pole-for-f1s-belgian-grand-prix\/","title":{"rendered":"Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli qualifies on pole for F1&#039;s Belgian Grand Prix"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli qualifies on pole for F1&#039;s Belgian Grand Prix<\/p>\n<p>Kimi Antonelli beat a display of Red Bull formation flying to take pole position for the Belgian Grand Prix in qualifying on Saturday and boost his Formula 1 title charge.<\/p>\n<p>Max Verstappen had set the fastest time after smart coordination with Red Bull teammate Isack Hadjar to give him the strongest possible slipstream on his lap.<\/p>\n<p>Mercedes driver Antonelli found a new level of pace on his lap to beat Verstappen by 0.317 of a second and dedicated the pole position as a birthday present to his father.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Let&#8217;s go, man, let&#8217;s go,&#8221; he said over the radio.<\/p>\n<p>Lando Norris qualified third-fastest but a grid penalty means he drops 10 places. Antonelli&#8217;s teammate George Russell is set to move up to third on the grid.<\/p>\n<p>\nRSS Feed Source: Independent Malta <a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.com.mt\/articles\/2026-07-18\/f1\/Mercedes-driver-Kimi-Antonelli-qualifies-on-pole-for-F1-s-Belgian-Grand-Prix-6736291483\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli qualifies on pole for F1&#039;s Belgian Grand Prix<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli qualifies on pole for F1&#039;s Belgian Grand Prix Kimi Antonelli beat a display of Red Bull formation flying to take pole position for the Belgian Grand Prix in qualifying on Saturday&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2139],"tags":[1850],"class_list":["post-85252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malta-news","tag-abatement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85252"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}