George Russell took pole and won Saturday’s Sprint, but Sunday told a completely different story: he, Lando Norris, and Oscar Piastri, three of the top four qualifiers, all left Montreal without scoring a single point, while Kimi Antonelli won from second on the grid to extend his championship lead.
Saturday: Russell Doubles Up
Russell took Sprint pole and converted it into the win, leading home Norris and Antonelli in third. Piastri was fourth, with Leclerc fifth and Hamilton sixth. Verstappen picked up two points in seventh, and Arvid Lindblad scored his first points of the weekend for Racing Bulls in eighth.
Qualifying: Russell Goes Back-to-Back
Russell backed up his Sprint pole with another for Sunday’s Grand Prix, with Antonelli alongside him in second and Norris third. Piastri qualified fourth, Hamilton fifth, and Verstappen sixth, his best qualifying position of the weekend so far. Isack Hadjar took seventh for Red Bull, ahead of Leclerc in eighth, a quieter session for Ferrari’s other car. Lindblad and Franco Colapinto rounded out the top ten.
Sunday: Antonelli Wins as the Front of the Grid Comes Apart
Antonelli took the win from second on the grid, his fifth of the season, extending a championship lead that shows no sign of slowing down. Hamilton was second, up from fifth, with Verstappen completing the podium in third after starting sixth. Leclerc recovered well from an eighth-place qualifying session to finish fourth, and Hadjar backed up a strong qualifying lap with fifth at the flag.
But the story of the race was further up the grid, or rather, who wasn’t there at the end of it. Russell, who had taken pole and won the Sprint, scored nothing on Sunday. Neither did Norris, third on the grid, nor Piastri, fourth. Three of the weekend’s four fastest qualifiers left Montreal without a single point between them, a genuinely strange result given how comfortably Mercedes and McLaren had led both qualifying sessions all weekend. No Safety Car was needed to explain it, whatever happened to the three of them happened without one.
Further down, Colapinto continued his run of solid weekends with sixth from tenth on the grid, Liam Lawson took seventh for Racing Bulls, and Gasly, Sainz, and Oliver Bearman completed the top ten. Alexander Albon was the day’s first retirement for Williams. Racing Bulls, not Red Bull Racing, claimed the fastest pitstop of the afternoon.
The Points Table Tells the Story
Antonelli’s win takes him to 131 points, extending his lead at the top. The bigger news is who didn’t move: Russell is static on 88 points, his Sprint haul the only thing he added all weekend, and stays second. Leclerc’s fourth place takes him to 75 and holds third.
Below that, the picture is scrambled. Hamilton’s second place takes him to 72 and back up to fourth, swapping places with Norris, who is static on 58 having scored nothing on Sunday. Piastri is also static, on 48, in sixth. Verstappen’s podium moves him to 43 in seventh. Hadjar’s fifth place is the biggest mover of the lot: 14 points now, up from 4, climbing to twelfth.
In the constructors’, Mercedes extend their lead to 219 points despite Russell’s blank Sunday, Antonelli’s win alone was enough. Ferrari move to 147 in second. McLaren are static on 106 in third, a quiet weekend to say the least given the team’s momentum coming out of Miami. Red Bull Racing move to 57 in fourth. Further down, Racing Bulls’s double haul from Lawson and Lindblad’s earlier Sprint point moves them to 21 and past Haas (static on 19) into sixth.
Drivers’ Championship — Top 10
| Pos | Driver | Team | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | 131 |
| 2 | George Russell | Mercedes | 88 |
| 3 | Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | 75 |
| 4 | Lewis Hamilton | Ferrari | 72 |
| 5 | Lando Norris | McLaren | 58 |
| 6 | Oscar Piastri | McLaren | 48 |
| 7 | Max Verstappen | Red Bull Racing | 43 |
| 8 | Pierre Gasly | Alpine | 20 |
| 9 | Oliver Bearman | Haas F1 Team | 18 |
| 10 | Liam Lawson | Racing Bulls | 16 |
Constructors’ Championship — Top 10
| Pos | Team | Points |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mercedes | 219 |
| 2 | Ferrari | 147 |
| 3 | McLaren | 106 |
| 4 | Red Bull Racing | 57 |
| 5 | Alpine | 35 |
| 6 | Racing Bulls | 21 |
| 7 | Haas F1 Team | 19 |
| 8 | Williams | 7 |
| 9 | Audi | 2 |
| 10 | Cadillac | 0 |
The Wider Picture
Mercedes take the headline result again, but Russell’s blank Sunday after a pole and a Sprint win is a genuine oddity worth watching for whether it repeats.
McLaren go from the momentum of Miami’s Sprint win and 2-3 finish to a completely blank Sunday for both cars. After a weekend that looked this promising in qualifying, it’s a result that raises more questions than it answers.
Ferrari will take real encouragement from this one: Hamilton’s second and Leclerc’s recovery from eighth on the grid to fourth is their best combined result of the season so far.
Red Bull had arguably their best weekend of 2026, Verstappen’s podium and Hadjar’s fifth both genuine, unqualified positives for a team that has spent most of the season fighting the midfield.
Racing Bulls quietly had a strong weekend across both cars, Lawson’s seventh and Lindblad’s Sprint point enough to move the team past Haas in the constructors’.
Final Verdict
Antonelli’s fifth win of the season keeps the top line of this story exactly where it’s been all year. But Canada will be remembered for what happened underneath it: a Sprint winner and pole-sitter, and two McLarens who spent the weekend looking like the field’s fastest cars, all leaving with nothing to show for it on Sunday. Red Bull and Ferrari will take real encouragement from where they finished. Mercedes and McLaren will want an explanation for where Russell, Norris, and Piastri didn’t.
Circuit photo: “Circuit Gilles Villeneuve” by Jmex, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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