CANADA — While the racetrack in Montreal, Canada, is the fifth-most used track by Formula 1 (F1) in the history of the sport, this past weekend was the first time the cars have had a sprint weekend there. As with Miami three weeks ago, that meant teams would get just one practice session followed by sprint qualifying, the sprint race, feature race qualifying, and end with the feature race on Sunday afternoon.

Mercedes continued their dominance in 2026, with George Russell winning the sprint race from pole position, and his teammate Kimi Antonelli winning the feature race. One of the keys to their wins in Canada was improving their starting procedure, one of their only weak points throughout the opening of the season.

Antonelli in particular had horrid starts when the lights went out at the beginning of the first four feature races and two sprint races, losing a total of 20 positions by the end of the first lap in those races. In Canada, Russell had pole and Antonelli was in second for both races. Neither Mercedes driver lost a position at the start of the sprint race, and they both lost out on just one position to McLaren’s Lando Norris in the feature race.

Six new performance upgrades were put to use in the Mercedes this weekend, and not only did their starts improve, but the car was once again in a league of its own. Russell easily won the Sprint race with Norris coming in second and Antonelli in third. In the feature race, Russell retired with a mechanical failure, but Antonelli went on to win by nearly eleven seconds over Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton in second and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in third.

Norris’ name keeps popping up in the periphery there, but McLaren took a huge step backwards to its ways of strategy blunders in the Canada weekend. The sprint race saw Norris in second and his teammate Oscar Piastri in fourth, but the only reason Norris was able to beat Antonelli to second is because of how significantly the Mercedes drivers were fighting one another.

During the sprint race, Antonelli and Russell made contact at least once, with several other close calls. Antonelli was livid on the radio, complaining about his teammate not leaving him enough space to race through the corners. When he was shuffled off the track on one such scuffle, Norris opportunistically pounced and grabbed second place away. If the Mercedes pair had kept their heads down, they could’ve stormed off to a significant lead.

This was evidenced in the feature race when the two Mercedes drivers had no competition other than one another throughout the entire race. But, with one caveat here. We never got to see the true race pace of the McLaren cars compared to the speedy Mercedes.

Sunday afternoon was damp, drizzly, and cold compared to the rest of the F1 weekend. During the reconnaissance laps before the race started, many drivers opted to use the intermediate tires, the first step towards wet weather tires on offer, due to the damp conditions.

Typically, the tires used by F1 cars are like those in IndyCar and NASCAR racing: slicks. Their name comes from the fact they have no tread at all on the tires. That means the entire tire is in contact with the road surface so the cars maximize their grip with those tires. If there are wet conditions, however, the water has nowhere to go with a slick tire which means the cars will very easily hydroplane.

Intermediate tires have a groove not unlike typical road tires allowing the water to get pushed away from the tire. The grooves mean less contact with the driving surface though, so in dry conditions, drivers on intermediate tires will not have as much grip nor as much speed as those on slicks.

Drivers and teams need to make a decision on what tires they will start the race with before the mechanics leave the grid which happens just prior to the formation lap. McLaren took a huge gamble on their strategy by bolting intermediate tires to start the race on both their cars in third and fourth position. The next driver deciding to do so was Nico Hulkenberg in his Audi, starting in 11th place.

On the formation lap, Piastri was on the radio to his McLaren team suggesting they made a mistake and he should come in to the pitlane and put on slick tires. That would forfeit his starting position, but he felt it would be less of a compromise to his race than the intermediate tires would be. His team told him the intermediate tires should “fire up” or get warm and into a better working window quickly, giving them a slight advantage over their competitors.

Piastri stayed out and lined up on the grid, only to be met with an aborted start. On the lap around once more, Piastri made his case and the team refused to budge again. The stewards were unable to get Arvid Lindblad’s stalled Racing Bull car off of the grid by the time the cars were back and ready to start, so a third formation lap was underway.

The exact same thing played out over the radio, and Piastri still lined up on the grid. Norris managed to burst ahead of the two Mercedes cars, but Piastri was caught behind them and started sinking down the order. He chose to pit at the end of the first lap and go onto slick tires. Norris gave up on what could have been, and dove into the pits on lap two to put slicks on.

When it proverbially rains though, it proverbially pours, and McLaren saw that first hand. Piastri locked up into the hairpin and barreled into the side of Alex Albon’s Williams. While Albon was out on the spot, Piastri made it back around to the pit lane for a new nose on his car and fresh tires. He had to stop again later and serve a ten second penalty for the collision. Piastri finished in eleventh, one position away from getting points. Norris drove over some of Piastri’s debris and had to make an extra pit stop to get it removed from his car. Shortly after, Norris retired his car with a gearbox problem.

While it is possible the McLaren drivers could’ve challenged Mercedes in the race if they started on slicks, we’ll never truly know. Instead, we got to see the two Mercedes drivers fight through every corner of the race track for some thirty laps with several lead changes. That exciting battle ground to a halt when Russell’s car had a mechanical failure and stopped on track.

Antonelli was the first driver in F1 history to earn his first three races in back-to-back-to-back fashion, and he now extended that record to four. Will he be able to keep up the momentum in Monaco on June 7? Tune in at 9am Eastern to find out if the slower course can trip up the Mercedes drivers and allow someone else to enjoy victory this year.