5 red lights: What we learned from the wild Formula 1 Canadian GP
After a frustrating start to the 2026 Formula 1 season, the start-stop and Canadian Grand Prix felt like the championship had finally hit top gear. Montreal delivered everything the new era promised: unpredictable strategic challenges, round-to-round battles, shifting team fortunes and a title fight that suddenly feels very alive.
What made the weekend particularly impressive was the sheer variety of events happening at once. Mercedes’ teenage prodigy continued its stunning development, McLaren found new ways to undermine itself and Formula 1’s old guard reminded everyone why the class is permanent with a thrilling scrap that stole the show. Further down the grid, the development race is already starting to reshape the standings, suggesting that the pecking order from the opening laps may not last much longer.
Most encouragingly for the sport, the racing itself finally looked like the version Formula 1 had hoped these regulations would create. The cars followed closely without immediately destroying their tires, the battles lasted several laps and overtaking was more earned than artificial. If Montreal is any indication, the 2026 season may have just found its spark. Here are five key takeaways from a chaotic Canadian Grand Prix weekend.
Russell (not Antonelli) feels the heat
After retiring from the lead and watching his team-mate win his 4th road race, a sullen George Russell claimed that “the gods didn’t want him to win” and that the championship would now “go to Antonelli”. While it’s tempting to chalk this remark up to the Brit being a natural loser after his DNF, the fact remains that a 43-point deficit (though considerable) is certainly not insurmountable with at least 17 races remaining.
After all, Lando Norris came back from a 34-point deficit to win last year’s championship following his retirement from the 2025 Dutch GP, while Max Verstappen came agonizingly close to closing in on a whopping 100-point lead in the last few races.
A slightly smarter reading of Russell’s remarks is that this is a psychological ploy to put pressure on his 19-year-old team-mate, whose dominance at the start of the season has surprised everyone in the paddock – including his Mercedes team. But it does suggest, rather tellingly, that Russell himself is facing the heat and realizing that Antonelli, in his second season, is no longer a compliant rookie eager to follow his more experienced team-mate’s lead – a fact that was clear from the pair’s scintillating on-track battles during both the sprint and the main event.
Yes, Antonelli made some ill-advised mistakes during both races and it could be argued that Russell’s sprint win and his hold on the lead before retiring on Sunday can be attributed to the Briton having a cooler head on his shoulders. Still, there was an inescapable feeling for anyone watching over the weekend that it was the young Italian who had the edge over his older team-mate in terms of race speed. The fact that it happened at arguably Russell’s strongest track on the calendar is what’s likely to keep him up at night more than just a 43-point deficit.
World champions show how it’s done
For all the celebrated nature of their rivalry, it is often overlooked that Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen have actually only shared a title fight once. On Sunday, two of the greatest drivers in the sport (with a combined 11 titles) gave us a masterclass in hard-yet-clean racing as they traded positions in their battle for the podium during the race, eventually finishing just half a second apart. After both racers put in their best performance of the season so far, the pair had a heart-to-heart exchange
In the cooling room and on stage while they celebrated the victory of young Antonellihelped many fans still reeling from their epic but bitter 2021 title showdown.
While fans of the sport still yearn for a Verstappen vs Leclerc or Verstappen vs. Russell, Sunday’s duel showed that the real race for cash was a rematch of Verstappen vs Hamilton.
The disastrous McLaren class
While Ferrari are often the target of social media banter for their long and harrowing history of making questionable strategic calls to the agony of their drivers, their fiercest rivals may get off lightly, even if they shout too often themselves.
Montreal was another scratch from McLaren, with the Woking team opting to start both their drivers on medium tires on a track that was dry for most of it. It was a disaster that put the team – which is arguably the only real challenger Mercedes has at the moment – firmly on the back foot. As a result, both drivers soon found themselves within a lap of the leaders they had hoped to challenge after having to make unplanned pit stops to switch to dry tyres. Their races never really recovered, a reliability issue forced Lando Norris to retire, while an uncharacteristically rushed crash with Alex Albon and subsequent penalty resulted in Oscar Piastri finishing 11th and out of the points.
HAMILTON IN VERSTAPPEN, MCLAREN’N LASTK SEMN TYE ALMI!
Lewis Hamilton: “McLaren messed everything up.”
Max Verstappen: “I heard you said rubber there too! (angry look)”pic.twitter.com/6PIU7NaQxl— Formula Turkiye (@FormulaTurkiye) May 24, 2026
Both drivers agreed with team management, insisting the call to start the race on wet tires was fine and could easily have paid off had the circumstances been slightly different. Still, it’s puzzling why – faced with an obvious catch-22 – the team chose not to deploy strategies that would guarantee at least one of their drivers would be in a position to challenge for the lead. It all comes back to McLaren’s dogged “Pápay Rules” policy, which is sparingly fair to both of its drivers, even when it backfires equally on both (Qatar 2025 immediately springs to mind). But while it’s admirable (if probably naïve) to just go for your drivers in a season where both are title contenders – in a season where Mercedes’ priority is before it’s too late, it’s baffling that McLaren is still so visibly uncomfortable with prioritizing either of its drivers.
Gain development to change the pecking order
With Canada just the fifth round on the season calendar, it’s easy to forget that the season actually started almost 3 months ago – and now we’re seeing the first signs that the championship standings are decided by a development race between teams rather than who got things right at the start. The updates Ferrari, McLaren and especially Red Bull brought in Miami seemed to close the gap on Mercedes to an encouraging extent, but the bigger changes were lower down the order.
Buoyed by its new Mercedes customer engine, Alpine has made big gains from its shaky start and is now a clear No.5 in the standings, with both drivers regularly qualifying and finishing in the top 10. Williams look set to be another big winner in the development race, with reliability somewhat masking their car’s overweight issues. Points in the last few races have now seen the team move up to 8th in the standings – at the expense of Audi. The German carmaker had an encouraging debut in Australia with a points finish, but has since struggled with reliability issues for both of its drivers. In a chaotic race in Montreal, the team finished 12th and 13th out of 16 cars – a missed opportunity given how many points their rivals scored.
Big winner so far in 2026
With all the grumbling about energy harvesting and super trimming, it’s easy to overlook the biggest success of the 2026 regulations to date. In Montreal, several cars stayed within half a second of the car in front for most of the race without damaging their tires, which was unthinkable in the latter stages of the previous rules era. There was indeed a point in the race where the top 6 (Russell, Antonelli, Verstappen, Hamilton, Leclerc and Hadjar) were locked in individual battles with less than 1 second to spare, making for a thrilling spectacle.
With this year’s regulation changes, F1 finally seems to be in the sweet spot between the “impossible to overtake in dirty air” races of 2025 and the “yo-yo races” we saw in the early rounds of this season. May this trend continue.
Montreal felt like the moment the 2026 season really came to life. The competition was fierce, the tension unmistakable and the fight for the title was suddenly very real. Above all, we don’t have to wait forever for the next race. Bring on Monaco!
– The end
Issued by:
Amar Panicker
Published on:
May 26, 2026 14:06 IST
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