The 2026 Canadian Grand Prix weekend at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve noticed the intra-team battle between championship chief Kimi Antonelli and his Mercedes team-mate George Russell intensify.
Whereas Antonelli claimed one other victory on the Canadian Grand Prix, it was the Saturday dash race that painted an image of the 19-year-old’s rising pains in addition to the necessary function of his skilled race engineer, Peter ‘Bono’ Bonnington, and Mercedes workforce chief Toto Wolff.
As Antonelli and Russell battled it out on monitor throughout the dash, the Italian driver’s frustrations boiled over onto his workforce radio, the place he accused his team-mate of pushing him off the monitor. As he continued to complain, Wolff stepped in to instruct his younger driver to put it aside for a non-public dialog following the race, whereas Bonnington constantly advised the motive force to shift his focus again to the race.
Sky Sports activities System 1 co-commentator and analyst Martin Brundle mirrored on the second in a column.
“The inevitable occurred into Flip One when Antonelli tried to cross across the outdoors,” the previous driver wrote. “He was very near incomes the precise to racing room from his extra senior team-mate, however ultimately any driver preventing for a victory not to mention a championship was going to run him out of monitor. Any of us would have accomplished, or anticipated, the identical.
“Kimi misplaced his head a bit all through the Dash such that the headmaster Toto Wolff even intervened on the radio. Kimi is fortunate to have the knowledge of Bono and Toto at these moments, the remainder of us would have simply gone straight to the scene of the contact or accident, and recriminations publish race.”
All of it appeared to be put behind Russell and Antonelli by the point that grand prix qualifying got here round, they usually went on to have one other nice battle throughout the Canadian Grand Prix earlier than the Briton was compelled to retire as a result of a battery failure.
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