Russell earns first win of season in Canada, Antonelli first podium on standout day for Silver Arrows; Verstappen holds steady in P2, as McLaren teammates collide late in race, Norris DNFs

Mercedes’ George Russell drove a superbly controlled race after starting from the pole and was able to hold off the best efforts of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen to take the win at Sunday’s slow simmering Canadian Grand Prix. Silver Arrows teammate Kimi Antonelli made an opening lap pass on McLaren’s Oscar Piastri to grab P3 from the Aussie points leader and then the Italian rookie drove beautifully to hold that spot for the duration of this 70-lap contest at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve and put a second Mercedes on the podium with that satisfying third place, a career best. Antonelli was aided somewhat by an internecine squabble between Piastri and his Papaya stablemate Lando Norris late in the going, which robbed Piastri of his ability to focus forward and instead resulted in multiple laps of hammer-and-tongs battling over P4 between the first and second place drivers in the Championship. As seemed preordained by the exceptionally hard racing between McLaren teammates, something dramatic was bound to happen and it was Norris who ended up the big loser when he made a lunge to the outside of Piastri down the start-finish straight on Lap 67. The gap the young Briton thought was there was not and Norris’s front wing clipped Piastri’s rear left tire, leading to the collapse of the wing and the end of Norris’s day. While Norris admirably put his hand up to take the blame, it was still a foolish error in judgment that cost the team his guaranteed fifth-place points and also put Piastri, the F1 points leader, at risk of also DNF’ing. Thankfully, his car proved stout enough and the team was able to change tires during the ensuing Safety Car period to be safe and guard against an ill-timed puncture. The race eventually ended under the Safety Car, as there simply weren’t enough laps remaining to remove Norris’s stricken car, clean up the debris and then restart again.

Into the wall and out of the race! 😱

Lando Norris apologised for this collision with his teammate Oscar Piastri #F1 #CanadianGP pic.twitter.com/4FiNVm1hiI

— Formula 1 (@F1) June 15, 2025

For Russell, Antonelli and the Mercedes factory team, the McLaren meltdown just put their sterling efforts in an even more favorable light. It remains to be seen if their pace in Canada can be replicated in future — the next race is also at a short circuit, the Red Bull Ring in Austria, albeit one that’s a lot twistier and with much more elevation change and traditional runoff areas instead of the Wall of Champions. But Russell clearly had the pace on Verstappen, who, despite a very composed and well controlled drive, saw his streak of three Canadian GP victories in a row broken. For Russell, it was sweet revenge after Verstappen beat him last year despite the Mercedes man also starting from pole in ’24.

Pics courtesy GrandPrix247.com

If it wasn’t quite was as dramatic as McLaren’s, Ferrari also had a stressful day, with Charles Leclerc voicing doubts about the team’s tire strategy and pit stop timing and Lewis Hamilton running over a groundhog on Lap 13 that badly damaged the floor of his Prancing Horse and cost him valuable downforce. However, Leclerc gained from Norris’s misfortune despite having a bumpy weekend to come home P5 and Hamilton persevered to nurse his wounded mount to the finish in P6. Fernando Alonso gave a brilliant effort to hustle his suddenly rapid Aston Martin into a P7 finish; Kick Sauber’s Nico Hulkenberg got another nice result in P8; Haas’s Esteban Ocon scored for the second time the last three races in P8; and Williams’ Carlos Sainz took the last point in P10 after running a super long opening stint all the way to Lap 57 before making his first and only stop for fresh Pirelli rubber.

Top 10 finishers of the Canadian GP:

Complete race results available via Formula1.com.

The next race is in a fortnight — the Austrian Grand Prix from the short and speedy Red Bull Ring in Spielberg. Can Mercedes keep their new-found mojo working at another compact track or will Verstappen dominate at Red Bull’s home race, as he has so often in the past? And can McLaren put the intra-team drama of Canada behind them and, if so, is Piastri now the real leader over the occasionally inconsistent Norris? Hope to see you then to find out how it all shakes out!