There was a time in George Russell’s seven-year Formula 1 career that he could afford a cruel instance of racing misfortune. In fact, every single one of those seasons, before this 2026 campaign. But not now. Not amidst an intra-team championship battle which, to his utter dismay, is currently only heading in one direction.
Yet one man’s chagrin is another man’s exultation. For Kimi Antonelli, life does not get any better right now. Not only did he claim his fourth victory in a row on the streets of Montreal – the first driver ever to win their first four races consecutively – but he stood on top of the podium alongside two of the sport’s greats and two of his closest mentors: Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen.
Want to wipe the smile off the 19-year-old’s face? Good luck with that.
Of more significance, of course, is the impact of Antonelli’s 25-point boost in the face of Russell’s unfortunate mechanical retirement. Both Mercedes drivers battled in thrilling, close-to-the-bone fashion in the first-half of the race, swapping the race lead as they refused to give each other an inch.
It was only late in the day when the Silver Arrows urged their drivers to relent; Toto Wolff and his team should be applauded for permitting such wheel-to-wheel combat, a decade on from Hamilton and Nico Rosberg’s infamous Barcelona crash in similar title-inducing, nerve-shredding circumstances.
But on lap 30, everything changed. Not that Russell will view it as such, but there is some irony that Mercedes’s power unit – unequivocally the most dominant in the field this year – was what gave up the ghost. An engine failure nobody saw coming brought a sorry end to the drama. It was Russell’s first retirement in 38 races, since Silverstone 2024.
The boy from King’s Lynn, aghast with rage, threw his head restraint out of his cockpit, an action he would later receive a suspended £4,300 fine for, and ripped his gloves off in disgust.
“Right now it’s [Antonelli’s] to lose,” Russell said. The 28-year-old now trails his teammate by 43 points.
“So many points ahead, it feels like the gods don’t want me to be in this fight. The pressure is off, I’ll go out and enjoy every single race, try and win every single race and I’ve got nothing to lose.
“I don’t want to be stood here talking like that and of course I’m frustrated and want to be in that fight… hopefully the luck turns.”
To his credit, Antonelli did not rub salt into the wounds. A day on from his radio outburst in the face of contact between the pair in the sprint race, the Italian acknowledged his teammate’s bad luck and their captivating on-track conflict.
“It was very close and the (car failure) was a shame for him as it would have been a very cool battle,” he said. “But we will take it, another win.”
“It was nice to end the weekend well, not really the way I wanted to win, it was a close fight and I think it would have gone down right until the end.”
Much like Lando Norris’s crestfallen experience in the Zandvoort sand dunes after his late retirement at the Dutch Grand Prix last year, the snapshot of a gutted Russell watching his broken Mercedes car getting wheeled off the track could be one of the pictures of the season.
Yet how the British driver responds, as we head back to the traditional set of European races this summer, will define his campaign. While Norris only had nine rounds remaining to overturn a 34-point lead, Russell still has 17 races left to gradually chip away at the deficit. What he cannot allow to happen, however, is for Antonelli to run over the hills and far away.
By the time he claimed his world championship in Abu Dhabi last year, Norris acknowledged that his brush with misfortune last year was the best thing that could have happened to him. Afterwards, relieved of pressure, he threw caution to the wind and reeled in McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri rapidly.
Russell, who has more time on his side, does not need to invoke such aggressions just yet. Yet, though he won’t like this, there may well come a time when he will have to replicate his compatriot’s 2025 change of approach. In fact, who knows: Sunday’s desperate DNF could be the best thing to happen to Russell, if it reinvigorates his crumbling title charge.
