Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has absolved his driver Kimi Antonelli from any responsibility with regard to his bad starts over the Miami Grand Prix weekend.

While Mercedes have had the best car so far, both Antonelli and George Russell have struggled to execute clean starts, but with Antonelli being on pole three times in a row and suffering from launch issues, he has been under the spotlight.

Ahead of the Miami Grand Prix, Antonelli said that the Formula 1 regulations tweaks to avoid having drivers bogging down at the start were not enough to solve his issue, which was more fundamental and required some hardware change and redesign on his Mercedes W17.

In Miami, Antonelli started the Sprint Race from second but dropped at the start and ultimately finished in sixth. He started the Grand Prix on Sunday from pole, dropped down the order as well, but then took the win after a tenacious drive.

“It's not at all on him,” Wolff said of Antonelli's bad starts. “I think today [Sunday] and yesterday [Saturday] were team mistakes.

"We all know it's just not good enough. We're not doing a good enough job in giving them a tool in their hands, whether it's [the] clutch or the grip estimates."

While Ferrari have enjoyed great starts thanks to their small turbo, which develops boost faster than rival power units, McLaren, who use a Mercedes power unit, have managed to have better starts.

Wolff admitted the issue; he said: “We are the only ones who, let's say, haven’t got that right now for a few races.

"We just have to dig even deeper to try to understand how we can fix that, because I agree that the gaps are not big enough to cruise into the sunset, and therefore you can't be missing starts," he concluded. (Reporting by Agnes Carlier)