The Canadian GP weekend saw an intense battle between Mercedes teammates George Russell and Kimi Antonelli in both the Saturday sprint and Sunday's main event. The wheel-to-wheel action came close to going a little too far for an intra-team contest, but it just about stayed within the limits of what is acceptable, despite a few trips across the grass as they fought for position.
In the end, the action came to a halt in the Grand Prix only when Russell stopped with a power unit issue, the erstwhile leader showing his frustration by throwing his headrest out of the car – an understandable bit of petulance in the circumstances, but one that landed him in trouble with the FIA.
It's clear now that we have a great World Championship battle on our hands. This was supposed to be Russell's year, with the American making the most of what has been a long apprenticeship with Williams and latterly alongside Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes to show that he's capable of winning a World Championship, as his close contemporary Lando Norris did last year.
View Price on AmazonAntonelli was expected to continue on his learning curve, keep Russell on his toes, and maybe take the odd win here or there. All went to plan when Russell won the season opener in Australia, but since then Antonelli has had a sensational run of four victories on the bounce – and nobody has ever scored their first quartet of wins in consecutive races.
Luck continues to go his way and against Russell, with the latter's power unit failure on Sunday the most public example. "Of course, it was nice to end the weekend well," the 19-year-old said after the flag. "It was not really the way I wanted to win, because it was a close fight with George, and I think would have gone all the way until the end. We'll take it, and this time it went well for me and bad for him, and it might be another occasion where it goes bad for me and well for him. We've just got to keep maximizing and take every opportunity that presents."
It's not just about his rival's misfortunes – Antonelli has been on brilliant form from the start of the season, taking advantage of the huge reset in the rules that has negated years of knowledge accumulated by more experienced drivers to make the most of this new energy management era. Just five races in he has a huge 43-point lead over Russell, and while there is still a long way to go, it's a cushion that must look daunting to the man in second place.
To his credit Russell tried to see the positives when he met the media after the race, despite the pain caused by that power unit failure. "I loved it, I thought it was great, and I've not had a battle like this in years,” he said when Road and Track asked about the fight with Antonelli. "I haven't seen a battle like this, probably since Lewis and Nico [Rosberg] in Bahrain 2014. And these new cars allow you to do that, these new engines allow you to do that. I don't know why anybody wants to change them, because we had amazing battles in Melbourne, we had great battles in China. Kimi and I have had a great battle today and yesterday, and that's only possible because of how these power units are. We know how we need to race, and I think we both had it under control, and it was great, because I really, really enjoyed it personally."
The mechanical failure aside, it all worked out well in the end in terms of the on-track fighting. However, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff accepted that it could easily have gone the other way, and he could have been dealing with the sort of disastrous outcome that cropped up more than in the Hamilton/Rosberg days.
Source: roadandtrack.com
