In 2025, McLaren came in fully prepared for its drivers to lead the championship battle. For McLaren, this meant doing the equivalent of writing up a 100-page legal document to try to settle the championship with as little actual conflict as possible. The year's paltry tension and intrigue were achieved by performing elementary arithmetic on points totals and McLaren making some of the worst gaffes you'll see a championship-caliber team make, rather than any true narrative propulsion. By the end of it, one was almost starting to prefer that an asteroid strike earth and put everyone out of their misery—i.e. for Max Verstappen to win the Drivers' Championship.
Experiencing Mercedes and its drivers now is like taking a sip of fresh water and only then realizing how parched you'd been all along. In the standings, the championship battle is not particularly close. One Mercedes driver has won the last four races, though perhaps not the one you would have expected going in. Much of the early-season excitement has been the result of that divergence from pre-season expectation, with teenage phenom Kimi Antonelli repeatedly beating presumptive favorite George Russell via dominant pole-to-win conversions. But this Sunday's Canadian Grand Prix finally gave both drivers the opportunity to answer the all-important question: How will they race each other, wheel-to-wheel?
The answer: very, very hard. Because the Canadian GP is one of six tortured sprint weekends this year, Saturday provided a spoiler for Sunday's racing. Perhaps some grace must be given here: It did also give us a plea from Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff to Antonelli to "concentrate on the driving please, and not on the radio moaning." But despite Wolff admonishing Antonelli for his extensive public complaints, and no doubt experiencing flashbacks to the notoriously acrimonious Lewis Hamilton–Nico Rosberg era of the team, whatever private discussions before Sunday did not diminish the spectacle. Spectators can only be grateful.
For 30-something laps on Sunday, Russell—who finally managed to win pole position over his teammate after a three-race drought—and Antonelli delivered a feast of elbows-out, wheel-to-wheel racing. The entire first stint is well-worth watching or re-watching in full, but the bulk of the race highlights can suffice. Antonelli got a slightly better start off the line than Russell, passing him at race start. (It was actually McLaren's Lando Norris who took the lead on intermediate tires, though the McLaren strategy gamble was—surprise, surprise—ultimately disastrous, and led to both cars being called into the pits just a couple of laps later.) On lap six, Russell retook the lead from Antonelli going into the final chicane, with Antonelli locking up and running wide to avoid hitting the back of his teammate.
Then it was lap after lap of attempted overtakes by Antonelli, who helped demonstrate the strengths of this year's regulations. Cars can actually follow each other closely in the dirty air without totally demolishing their tire lifespan; falling out of the one-second range no longer condemns a driver to their track position without an overwhelming pace differential. The Mercedes cars had their battles on soft tires, no less!
The hairpin at turn 10 was the true star of the race. Russell consistently struggled on that corner, and Antonelli would make him pay—but never quite make it stick. Antonelli managed the overtake on lap 12 after Russell went wide, but was re-passed on the subsequent straight; his late lunge into turn one the next lap was a little too optimistic. On lap 17, Russell locked up going into turn 10, kicking up a cloud of smoke, as Antonelli again passed by, went side-by-side on the straight, and again was not able to keep the car ahead in the chicane. On lap 22, Russell once again struggled with the exit of turn 10, and Antonelli, this time, stayed behind along the final straight before making a decisive pass into the final chicane.
It didn't last. On lap 24, the hairpin featured again, with Antonelli going way wide and Russell easily passing through the gap. (One may recall that last year the hairpin, and what qualified then as great wheel-to-wheel racing, was primarily used as advertisement for the Oscar-nominated F1 movie.) Antonelli once again glued himself to Russell's back on the final straight, but this time, he wasn't able to stick the overtake as cleanly going into the final chicane. The cars made contact and Antonelli bailed out, taking the place off-track, while Russell ran over the bumpers on the next turn.
Here, Mercedes intervened. A relatively new rule in F1 means that race direction will no longer instruct cars to give back positions after overtaking off the track, placing the onus on teams to make the decision themselves, or risk a hefty 10-second penalty. The bind this places teams in was, in part, why Verstappen intentionally ran his car into Russell's in Barcelona last year. Rather than risk a intra-team penalty that would, in the worst case scenario, demote Antonelli below Verstappen behind, Mercedes instructed Antonelli to return the place to his teammate. Antonelli complied, though not without some complaint.
It would work out for him in the end. On lap 30, going into that same chicane, Russell experienced a battery failure, leading to an extraordinarily unlucky retirement due to reliability. It was an anticlimactic end to what had been, for so long, a great on-track battle. At least spectators could take solace in a late-race battle for second between Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen, of which Hamilton was the victor. Antonelli, despite his post-race radio about not wanting to win due to a retirement, will still gladly take gaining 24 points on his teammate over the weekend.
The unequivocal loser was Russell, who summed up the experience succinctly, by chucking his head restraint onto the track in front of his car in frustration (Russell later told the stewards that he was embarrassed by his actions, and received a €5,000 suspended fine) and then staring into space.
As well he might. Antonelli's championship lead has now ballooned to 43 points. The one thing McLaren was good for last year was proving that any championship lead can be squandered; Antonelli still has a long, long ways to go before the podium pictures—Hamilton, Antonelli, Verstappen; something old, something new, something Dutch—can be viewed as a truly legendary result, despite the temptation to do so now.
But this weekend was the first real opportunity for Antonelli and Russell to duke it out on track, and they both showed that they were up for the challenge. That is what ultimately makes for a delicious championship battle. No matter if the championship ultimately ends in a clear driver hierarchy or a close-fought tally to the finish, the victor will have to earn it, tooth and nail.
