George Russell wins Canadian Grand Prix as Lando Norris crashes out after colliding with Oscar Piastri
By JONATHAN MCEVOY
Lando Norris’s world championship dream ran into a wall at Montreal, a 200mph collision with his McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri the latest example of a fragility that is growing painful to watch.
The smash came on lap 67 of 70 on the start-finish straight in a Canadian Grand Prix won by a serene George Russell. The colliding pair were duelling for fourth place. One had pushed a wheel ahead, then the other.
Once more, Norris thought he saw a chance that didn’t exist to get ahead and stay there. He tried to thread his orange car through the side of Piastri, but instead he found the right back of the Australian’s machine and was sent into the wall right next to him on the left. Part of his McLaren flew off and grass and a grey plume of calamity flew through the air.
Norris’s front left tyre was hanging off as the car stopped on the grass verge.
‘Are you all right dude?’ said Will Joseph, his race engineer.
‘Yep, I’m sorry,’ replied Norris. ‘It’s all my bad. All my fault. Unlucky, sorry. Stupid from me.’
George Russell has won Mercedes' first race of the season beating Max Verstappen in Canada
The British driver secured victory for the German side in Montreal with his team-mate Kimi Antonelli in third
You have to admire the honesty because he could not fail to be damaged by making error after error this season, most of them silly but wounding slips, but this a far bigger and more obvious one.
It leaves his title hopes broken, at least for now – 22 points behind Piastri, who went on to finish fourth. The Briton had started the day 10 points off the lead, and starting seventh to Piastri’s third.
He had, again, made mistakes on Saturday in qualifying. The team said he had tried to lift them and himself after that in a positive debrief. And then this, the most upsetting dent of the growing litany.
McLaren boss Zak Brown had forecast a collision between his pair in the fastest car at the top stage of the title fight at some stage. And so it happened after Norris, given hard tyres at the start to help him out of his fix, was closing on his team-mate in those fateful final stages, chasing Piastri for a number of minutes.
Both had driven well, propelled by cars that offered them assistance unsurpassed in the field.
But that counted for nothing as Norris walked out of the cockpit unharmed for the long trek back, his helmet hiding his disappointment. Team principal Andrea Stella sipped from a water bottle. Now he and Brown must try to mend and mesh the debris of this huge setback.
The race ended behind a safety car with Max Verstappen second and Kimi Antonelli third.
As for Russell ker-ching! If I were him, I’d demand an extra five million pounds a year from Mercedes after this latest display exceeding brilliance.
Russell's win, his first since Las Vegas in November, takes him to within 62 points of Piastri
Antonelli (right) took P3 - his first podium in Formula One - to complete a strong afternoon for Mercedes
If I were Mercedes, I’d pay it.
He did not clash with rival Verstappen at the start as many had predicted, hoped for, or feared. He was too good for that.
Contract negotiations are moving at a snail’s pace despite his existing deal expiring at the end of this season. Whatever team principal Toto Wolff might say, it feels as though he is waiting to see whether Verstappen wants out from Red Bull.
That’s understandable because for the last few years the Dutchman has proved himself the best driver around, perhaps of all time, in the endless saloon bar debate.
Russell, this season, has demonstrated himself the supreme challenger to Verstappen’s veneration. They are the two finest drivers right now, Russell is a Mercedes project from his junior days, is maintaining a high-standard consistently – so why not stick with what you have? How grudging not to when Max, for all his abilities, might tilt the internal dynamic which is finally restoring a tangible degree of improvement to Mercedes.
If one of the Silver Arrows has to make way, it should be the highly rated, one-day-may-be-a-total star Antonelli, whose first career podium this was. For now, he should be made to bend a knee to Russell, who has shown all season who is master and who is pupil.
Russell set up his triumph – the fourth of his career spent at a previously moribund Mercedes and before that at deadbeat Williams – on Saturday. It was a brilliant pole lap, too, produced, from almost nowhere and clean out of the warm St Lawrence Seaway air. He called it his ‘most exhilarating’ qualifying lap, one that gave him ‘goosebumps’ – a massive margin of 0.160sec ahead of Verstappen.
For the rest of us, it set up the prospect of the two enemies side by side. They lined up on the pre-race grid. The clean-shaven Russell was in black shades and his silver ice jacket that makes him look an astronaut. Verstappen, stubbled, was opposite him. Neither betrayed any emotion bar their usual pre-race intensity.
Piastri put greater distance between himself and Norris after his team-mate crashed out
Lewis Hamilton endured another poor afternoon after he sustained damage to his Ferrari
It was hot out there, the sun fierce and that was not what Russell’s Mercedes and its engineering required. Or so it was predicted.
Russell was away like the rocket man he had looked moments earlier. His reactions were six-thousandths of a second faster and that was it. For now. But Verstappen was soon quick, faster on the straights than the Englishman, in the opening laps.
The tension persisted. Verstappen breathed hot air on Russell at those early stages.
Much history fed into this rivalry. And it was not only from Barcelona a fortnight ago when Verstappen, in a fit of raging Red Bull, biffed his old pal, a crime that moved him to 11 penalty points, one off a race ban. They basically hate each other and have long feuded.
But Russell was calm from the moment he led to claim his first win since Las Vegas last year.
The drama was clearly elsewhere. A final thought. Russell is now 62 points behind Piastri. Is he out of the title picture with 14 races left?
He was perhaps considering that question as Norris was trying to put a brave face on his worst day, one that was long on the way.
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