Kimi Antonelli took an absolute stranglehold on the 2026 F1 drivers’ championship with a dominant Canadian Grand Prix win ahead of Lewis Hamilton, who took the best grand prix finish of his Ferrari career.

Antonelli’s championship lead ballooned to 43 points thanks to team-mate and title rival George Russell’s day ending early, a devastating retirement near the race’s midpoint.

The first 30 laps of the race saw Antonelli and Russell go right back to their fierce battle from Saturday’s sprint, swapping the lead between themselves and even at one point coming to blows at the final chicane.

That fight continued even as the pair received radio messages from above imploring them not to leave the carcasses of two silver cars by the side of the track and ruin the team’s day entirely.

While the pair didn’t collide again, the team’s day did get markedly worse on Lap 31 when Russell suffered a catastrophic power loss, leaving him to trundle over the grass and park his car up – clearly furious, flinging his headrest out of his car and onto the track.

Ferrari and Red Bull took advantage of both Russell’s misfortune and a disastrous afternoon for McLaren (more on that shortly), with Hamilton overcoming an early mistake and slow pit-stop to hunt down Max Verstappen for second place as the laps ticked down, making the pass into Turn 1 on Lap 62 of 68.

Leading up to the start of the race, a light pre-race smattering of rain had left strategy choices completely up in the air, with the grid ending up split three ways between soft tyres, medium tyres and intermediates.

The most prominent team on inters was McLaren – whose drivers were openly telling the team that they believed the call was a mistake when on the formation lap(s). As it turned out, the drivers were absolutely right. While Lando Norris got such a jump off the line that he took the lead in the first corner, he and his team-mate were in the pits less than five minutes later to switch to dry tyres.

Norris’ day ended early in the second half when his gearbox failed down at the final hairpin, while Oscar Piastri did his best to compound his team’s mistake by driving clean into the side of Alex Albon on Lap 13, earning himself a broken front wing and ten-second penalty for his trouble. He finished out of the points in 11th.

One further note on a retirement for Sergio Perez, whose front-right suspension simply snapped under braking on entry to the pit lane. Sebastien Buemi-esque!

F1 Results: Canadian Grand Prix 2026