When Mercedes boss Toto Wolff stepped onto the Canadian Grand Prix grid, he surely must’ve felt a pang of concern as he watched his cars being prepared in first and fourth.

Mercedes had been competitive all weekend, and a qualifying stunner from George Russell secured pole position for the second season in succession.

But all these strong performances had come in different conditions. A quirk of the Canadian schedule means that the all-important FP2 and also qualifying are run several hours later that the race, taking place in the early evening rather than the middle of the afternoon.

Fox Sports, available on Kayo Sports, is the only place to watch every qualifying session and race in the 2025 FIA Formula One World Championship™ LIVE in 4K. New to Kayo? Get your first month for just $1. Limited time offer.

On Friday and Saturday those cooler, later conditions had perfectly suited the Mercedes car. But sunny Sunday skies and an ambient temperature of 25°C meant the smooth Montreal tarmac had rocketed to a sizzling 50°C.

Suddenly the playing field had changed, and Mercedes couldn’t be certain its cars would still look quite so convincing.

It turns out Wolff and his team needn’t have worried. In its most comprehensive performance since frigid Las Vegas last year, it stormed to victory with a superb drive from Russell, while young gun Andrea Kimi Antonelli secured his breakthrough maiden podium.

It was a glittering afternoon for the German marque.

If it only it could be certain how it got there.

Russell claims win amid McLaren chaos | 03:57

MERCEDES WINS, BUT DON’T CALL IT A BREAKTHROUGH

“I don’t even have a pullover on and we’re still competitive!” Wolff joked to Sky Sports. “It was a very good day and some learning also because that wasn’t a lucky victory or strategic victory, it was all tyres.

“George controlled the race at the front. No mistakes from the team, and then obviously Kimi performed under pressure

“Now we need to learn what it is that makes us strong this weekend. Was it the track characteristics? Was it the smooth asphalt?

“We have to bank this one, tick the box. The monkey’s off the back.”

There are some elements in Canada that played to the team’s strengths regardless of Sunday’s hot track temperature.

It’s not the heat per se that the Mercedes car doesn’t like; a big part of that weakness is the fact a hot track punishes the tyres.

MORE CANADIAN GRAND PRIX

REPORT: McLarens collide in Norris blunder as Piastri handed title boost

‘JUST SILLY’: Piastri and Norris respond over crash blunder as fuse lit in title scrap

‘MADE A FOOL OF MYSELF’: Moment Norris faced Piastri as star ‘breaks No.1 rule’

NORRIS EXPOSED: Norris’s biggest Piastri issue has reared its ugly head. He has nowhere left to hide

But Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is a very particular circuit with a narrow speed profile. There are no high-speed corners to stress the rubber; all the corners are slow and almost all of them are chicanes. The circuit is also rated low for abrasiveness.

It meant that a car that could be set up to be good on the brakes and good on traction could excel, and Mercedes did exactly that.

“There wasn’t much tyre overheating even though it was hot,” Russell said. “It’s a very smooth tarmac here in Canada. There are quite low speed corners, so the tyres aren’t under much stress.

“I think we expected a bit more tyre overheating considering the track temperature, but we’re under no illusions that this really suited the strengths of our car the same way as it did last year.

“As soon as I had clear air, I could comfortably pull the gap out. It wasn’t dead easy, but I felt confident in myself and the car.

“It was a good day, and I feel proud of myself, feel proud of the team, especially after this time 12 months ago when it was a victory lost.”

But in acknowledging that Mercedes nailed it opportunity this weekend at a friendly track, Russell cautioned that he didn’t see this as a breakthrough.

“For the majority of the circuits we know it’s a bit of a challenge [to set the car up], and that’s why this is the first weekend both of us are on the podium.

“But it’s great to see that when we get that chance, we take it.”

And that could be its own lesson from this weekend. While McLaren remains the car to beat, some circuit will suit its rivals well enough that perfect execution can lead to surprising results.

Mercedes was perfect this weekend and walked away victorious.

Norris & Piastri COLLIDE in Canada! | 01:04

RUSSELL CONTRACT UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT AFTER CANADA TRIUMPH

Russell’s fourth career victory inevitably led to one question: why is he still out of contract?

There are few seats available in 2026 and few top-line drivers. Most of the interest in the silly season revolves around Red Bull’s befuddled young driver program, Cadillac’s new seats and Pierre Gasly’s teammate at Alpine.

But Mercedes is out of sequence with most of the rest of the field and all of the frontrunning teams by having both drivers out of contract.

That’s particularly unusual given the investment the team has put into both Russell and Antonelli, who both rose through the team’s driver academy to line up for works constructor.

Wolff said Russell’s victory changed nothing, with his quality already well known and understood.

“We have never doubted on his speed, never doubted his capability to win races and win championships — that’s not linked, the two of them,” he told Sky Sports.

“He’s been stepping up over the years from the junior driver to the one who was a bit ahead, and now he’s grown even more. It’s really nice to see the development.”

Ask Mercedes or Russell and they say they’re in no rush and that they won’t get down to it until the middle of the year, though that window is fast approaching.

On the one hand it makes fine sense. With so little alternatives for either, there really is no rush. They’re bound to sign eventually.

But then there’s the persistent speculation that Max Verstappen could yet exit his contract, with rumours placing the triggers for various exit clauses in the next month. Wolff is a public admirer of the Dutchman, and many noted that he was surprisingly uncritical of Verstappen barging into Russell in the final laps of the Spanish Grand Prix.

And in the week leading up to the Canadian Grand Prix there were reports in the Italian media that Ferrari’s poor start to the season had Charles Leclerc reconsidering his commitment to the Scuderia. In 2023, near the end of Leclerc’s previous Ferrari contract, Wolff said he had the Monegasque on his radar.

Of course all this could simply be a play at Mercedes trying to win back some leverage in negotiations with Russell, whose value has surely risen off the back of his super consistent season so far.

Certainly few expect anything other than renewal, but how long he signs up for could be interesting. There could be a significant reshuffling of the field at the end of 2026, when it becomes clear which teams are nailing the new rules and which ones are failing under them.

The last time Mercedes engaged in a surprisingly long contract negotiation was with Hamilton for his last deal, which ended up being a one-year contract that allowed him to escape to Ferrari.

Whatever the situation, victory in Canada can only have helped Russell’s cause.

Lando apologises after ‘silly’ mistake | 01:00

WAS RED BULL RACING RATTLED BY RUSSELL?

Predictions of fireworks at the front of the field as Russell raced Verstappen proved empty, with only a few laps of tensions book-ending Mercedes control.

Russell’s start was too good for Verstappen, and all the Dutchman could do was attempt to pressure the Briton in the opening five laps in the hope Mercedes’s car really was going to burn through its tyres too quickly. Once it became clear that wasn’t going to happen, Verstappen committed to an aggressive early-stopping strategy to keep Antonelli behind him and clinch second place.

It wasn’t until after the race that victory came into his sights again, with Red Bull Racing lodging two protests against the result. Both pertained to the period behind the race-ending safety car.

The first protest accused Russell of erratic driving, alleging he hit the brakes deliberately hard down the long straight in an attempt to have Verstappen overtake him, thus earning the Dutchman a penalty.

The second was directly related, with the team accusing Russell of falling more than 10 car lengths behind the safety car, the regulated maximum distance, when he hit the brakes.

For Red Bull Racing the smoking gun was Russell checking his mirrors before he hit the brakes and then radioing his team that Verstappen had briefly overtaken him, which the team suggested was really a message for race control to alert them to a penalty-worthy incident.

If you were so disposed to a certain way of thinking, the argument mounted itself. Russell, in this strange feud with Verstappen, had joked on Saturday about forcing the reigning champion into a compromising position to try to have him make an error that might have earnt him a 12th penalty point and therefore an automatic race ban.

After an excruciating wait of five and a half hours, the stewards dismissed the protest out of hand.

They accepted Russell’s argument that he checked his mirrors to ensure Verstappen wasn’t about to rear-end him when he hit the brakes. They also accepted telemetry that showed Russell hadn’t used an unusual braking force and that Verstappen had in fact done exactly the same thing on previous laps behind the safety car.

It was always a long shot, particularly given the stewards hadn’t even noted either of the supposed incidents in the first place.

Instead it reeked of either paranoia or vengeance — paranoia because Russell had got into the team’s head after all his pot-stirring since the clash in Spain, or vengeance in an attempt to get back at one of Verstappen’s chief antagonists.

In the end it cost Red Bull Racing €2000 per rejected protest and everyone a very late night for nothing.

Stella: Lando misjudgement very costly | 01:56

ANTONELLI GETS BREAKTHROUGH PODIUM, BUT NOW COMES THE HARD PART

Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s first-lap pass on Oscar Piastri ended up making history. With neither McLaren driver either to catch him for the rest of the race, he became the third-youngest podium-getter in Formula 1 history, stepping onto the rostrum at 18 years and 294 days old.

He’s behind only Max Verstappen (18 years and 228 days) and Lance Stroll (18 years and 239 days) on the list.

He’s also the first Italian to stand on a podium since Jarno Trulli at the 2009 Japanese Grand Prix.

“It was much better than what I imagined,” he said of his first podium experience. “Hearing the crowd while walking onto the podium, I had massive goosebumps. That is definitely a moment I will remember for a very long time.

“Results like this and this feeling — you can’t buy this feeling. It’s an amazing feeling, and you just want more.

“I think the goal now is to try to keep the same momentum and try to achieve more podiums and hopefully maybe the first win — you never know in the future.”

Coming after sprint pole in Miami, Antonelli’s first podium was significant validation for Mercedes’s decision to elevate the junior straight into the senior team so young and with barely four years of car racing experience.

“It’s also a team achievement because we’ve taken him on broad when he was 11,” Wolff told Sky Sports. “What a wonderful achievement.

“I remember him standing in the garage he couldn’t even see the screens because he was so small.

“When [technical director] James Allison saw him the first time in the factory he thought he was a kid that had lost his father.”

But Wolff noted that as Antonelli grew more at home in Formula 1, expectation management would become increasingly important for Mercedes to keep his progress in check.

“The expectation management is so difficult because he’s been so successful through his karting career and single seaters.

“He’s dominated every single step on the way, and then you’re coming to Formula 1 and his expectations and his dad’s expectations — everybody was like, ‘He’s going to come in here and crush everyone’.

“This is Formula 1. This is much more difficult than everything else. It was difficult at times, but that’s why I think this podium is so important to get a little bit of that relief.”