Russell wins Canadian GP as McLaren drivers clash

George Russell cruised from pole to victory at the Canadian Grand Prix while title rivals Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris collided with four laps to go.

Norris had made a strong recovery from seventh on the grid to tail fourth-placed Piastri in the final stint of the race. Piastri had been battling for the final place on the podium behind Andrea Kimi Antonelli, but lapped traffic had balked his pursuit, slowing him down and putting Norris on his gearbox.

The Australian had absorbed around 10 laps of pressure from his teammate without the assistance of DRS, but Norris’s urgency to pass increased markedly when Antonelli came back into view, giving Piastri a key defensive tool.

Norris lunged down Piastri’s inside at the hairpin on lap 66, but Piastri crossed back underneath him to have the two orange cars running side by side down the back straight.

Piastri had the inside line and sliced into the chicane first, but Norris had good momentum on exit, with which he attempted to slingshot back through into the first corner.

Piastri covered the inside line, the left-hand side of the track, in an attempt to force Norris around the outside. Norris, however, committed to the inside all the same.

With no space for his car, the Briton rear-ended the Australian, instantly shattering his front wing and breaking his front-left suspension against the pit wall, ending his race on the spot.

Norris immediately claimed responsibility for the crash over team radio.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “All my bad. All my fault. Unlucky. Sorry. Stupid from me.”

Piastri escaped unscathed to hold fourth, pitting behind the ensuing safety car for soft tires to guard against a puncture, boosting his championship advantage to 22 points.

With only four laps remaining, the race ended behind the safety car, neutralizing what had become an engaging battle for the podium behind the serenely victorious Russell.

The Mercedes driver got the perfect launch to keep Verstappen behind him into the first turn, but the Dutchman kept the pressure up in the opening laps, clinging to the Mercedes gearbox to keep himself in DRS range.

Mercedes had been concerned that warmer track temperatures – 120 degrees F surface temperature in 75 degrees F ambient – would hurt its race pace, its car typically stronger in cooler weather, and Red Bull Racing tried to exploit that weakness by forcing Russell to keep up the pace.

Verstappen menaced in Russell’s mirrors for five laps, but it proved to be self-defeating. Not only did he elicit no errors, but he also hurt his own tires, which by lap 11 he was reporting were too fragile to continue.

Having dropped well out of DRS range, Red Bull Racing hauled the world champion in for an early first stop on lap 12, switching him to the hard tire. Russell followed him on the following tour to comfortably cover the undercut.

That would be as threatening as Verstappen would look to Russell’s lead. He progressively lost touch with Russell as they rose back through the order. Instead the reigning champion was forced to increasingly watch his mirror, with Antonelli looming as a threat through the middle stint.

Antonella kept the McLaren drama behind him. Glenn Dunbar/Getty Images

Antonelli had made a great start, running side by side with Piastri into Turn 1 to earn the inside line at Turn 2. Piastri briefly considered clinging to the Italian’s outside, which would become the outside line into the Turn 3-4 chicane, but thought better of it with his championship lead in mind.

The rookie stopped on lap 14, in series with Russell and Verstappen, and on the hard tire in the middle stint was quicker than the Dutchman ahead. By lap 36 he was within DRS, forcing Verstappen to make his second stop on the following tour to avoid the pass.

Antonelli responded on the following lap and rejoined the track side by side with Verstappen, whose warmer tires kept him ahead, but it set up the final stint as a duel for second place.

Piastri, having looked ineffectual for much of the race, delayed his second stop to build a seven-lap offset on the Italian ahead, and by lap 52 he was within DRS range of the Mercedes to make it a three-way fight.

Lapped traffic helped Antonelli’s defense, giving him DRS assistance to fend off the McLaren, Piastri, meanwhile, found himself more often balked by the slower cars, dropping him outside of DRS range and into Norris’s clutches, when their crash ultimately ended the battle.

Russell paraded home the field at reduced speed to claim Mercedes’s first victory of the season, with the fastest lap of the race completing a hat-trick in Montreal.

“It’s amazing to be back on the top step,” he said. “Amazing day for the team. Thanks to everybody back at the factory who’s been working so hard to get us back fighting for victories. It feels good. We had high expectations coming into this weekend, and it worked out as we thought.”

Verstappen said second was the best Red Bull Racing could manage after the opening two stints but was pleased to end the race with strong pace.

“It was quite a good race even though the first two stints we were struggling quite a bit on the tires,” he said. “So we did quite an aggressive strategy, and in the final stint we managed to hang on in there.

“We drove and attacking/defending – attacking with the strategy and defending the cars behind, but it worked out for us. That was the maximum possible for us today.”

Antonelli scored the first podium of his career, emphatically breaking a three-race scoreless run in the preceding triple-header.

“It was so stressful,” he said of his final stint. “But I’m super happy.

“The last stint I pushed a bit too hard behind Max and I killed a bit the front left and struggled a bit at the end, but I’m really happy to bring the podium home.”

Piastri held fourth despite the crash in the first race of the season not to feature a McLaren in the top two.

Ferrari teammates Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton finished fifth and sixth. Leclerc got caught between one and two stops and was unhappy with his team’s choice of tires, while Hamilton suffered damage early in the race that left him well off the pace.

Fernando Alonso finished seventh for his second consecutive score ahead of Nico Hulkenberg in Sauber’s third scoring race of the season.

Esteban Ocon finished ninth for Haas ahead of Carlos Sainz in the final points-paying places.

Oliver Bearman, Yuki Tsunoda, Franco Colapinto, Gabriel Bortoleto, Pierre Gasly, Isack Hadjar and Lance Stroll completed the finishers.

Liam Lawson and Alex Albon both retired with apparent power unit issues, while Norris was classified without taking the checkered flag.