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Antonelli finished more than 10 seconds ahead of Ferrari\u2019s Lewis Hamilton.<\/p>\n
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Antonelli opened a 43-point lead over Russell through five of 22 races. After Russell won the season-opening race in Australia, Antonelli won in China, Japan and Miami and now Montreal.<\/p>\n
Russell\u2019s exit marked a nightmare end to an otherwise stellar weekend for the Montreal winner last year. He took the sprint race from the pole Saturday and started first Sunday.<\/p>\n
Once his power unit died, the 28-year-old English driver threw his headrest across the track and slammed his fists into the front of the car before leaving the circuit, whipping his gloves to the ground in rage.<\/p>\n
Russell said he wished he\u2019d had \u201c40 more of those laps\u201d to battle Antonelli.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI loved it. I thought it was great, and I\u2019ve not had a battle like this in years,\u201d he said. \u201cRight now (the championship) is his to lose, so many points ahead. It feels like the gods don\u2019t want me to be in this fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cPressure\u2019s off. Go out, enjoy every single race, try and win every single race and I\u2019ve got nothing to lose.\u201d<\/p>\n
The spotlight shifted to two longtime rivals once Russell\u2019s day ended, with Hamilton chasing down Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in a throwback to 2021.<\/p>\n
The seven-time world champion finally overtook Verstappen for second with six laps to go in cold and windy conditions at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve for his his best result since joining Ferrari last year.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s been pretty tough for the past year and a bit, so to finally find our sweet spot and have a good weekend, it\u2019s an amazing feeling,\u201d the 41-year-old Hamilton said.<\/p>\n
Ferrari\u2019s Charles Leclerc was fourth, followed by Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar.<\/p>\n
McLaren\u2019s day turned ugly after both drivers started in the second row. Lando Norris was forced to retire with a gearbox issue on Lap 40, while teammate Oscar Piastri placed 11th after a team strategy to start on intermediate tires backfired.<\/p>\n
It spat rain much of the day, but the inclement weather subsided before the race. Norris flew from third to first off an exciting start on the drying track, only to switch tires three laps in. That ceded the lead to Antonelli, who\u2019d also moved past Russell following the pole-sitter\u2019s poor start.<\/p>\n
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Russell regained the lead on the seventh lap with a clean overtake as Antonelli nearly hit his teammate from behind after his wheels locked up, rolling off the track.<\/p>\n
The fighting continued into Lap 12 as Antonelli advanced to first, only for Russell to re-take his position before fending off multiple overtake attempts five laps later.<\/p>\n
The exchanges persisted until Russell\u2019s engine blew.<\/p>\n
\u201cA couple of times it was maybe a little bit on the edge, but we were going at each other,\u201d Antonelli said. \u201cWe were both pushing and we both wanted to win. And I think for everyone watching it was pretty entertaining.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The Mercedes drivers had gone head-to-head all weekend in the fastest cars on the grid, with Russell edging Antonelli by 0.068 seconds in both the sprint and race qualifying sessions.<\/p>\n
Tensions reached a tipping point early in the sprint race when they made contact on Antonelli\u2019s overtake attempt, as Russell kept his line and forced Antonelli into the grass.<\/p>\n
Antonelli lost his cool over the team radio, calling the move \u201cvery naughty\u201d before demanding a penalty. Stewards did not investigate.<\/p>\n
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AP Formula 1: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/formula-one<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli, of Italy, competes during the F1 Canadian Grand Prix auto race in Montreal, Sunday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19442,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8997,14147,5825,8993,14150,5,1802,8992,4646,6174,14168,8999,25,26,21,22,14151],"class_list":["post-19441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-italy","tag-charles-leclerc","tag-f1-canadian-grand-prix","tag-george-russell","tag-gilles-villeneuve","tag-isack-hadjar","tag-italy","tag-kimi-antonelli","tag-lando-norris","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-montreal","tag-oscar-piastri","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","tag-product-32562-ap-online-other-sports-news","tag-product-32566-ap-online-auto-racing-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}