KEY MOMENTSRussell wins after a tense battle with AntonelliAntonelli subdued by Wolff in heated radio exchangeRussell snatches pole with a last gasp effort<\/p>\n
The racing action got underway at the Canadian Grand Prix with the sprint race.\u00a0<\/p>\n
George Russell started from pole position with team-mate Kimi Antonelli behind, but the Mercedes drivers made contact several times in the matter of a single lap, leading Antonelli to demand a penalty for Russell.<\/p>\n
The tension continued in the post-race press conference, after Toto Wolff had been forced to go on the team radio in an attempt to cool Antonelli’s temper.<\/p>\n
McLaren and Ferrari have been locked in battle all weekend, with Lewis Hamilton showing strong pace, but finishing last of the quartet in the sprint race, after a brush with the Wall of Champions. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Alex Albon was the major casualty of practice, with the left-hand side of his Williams destroyed after he struck a groundhog and pitched into the concrete wall on the exit of Turn 7. He took no part in sprint qualifying, but started the race from the pit lane.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Driver futures have been a topic of discussion already, with Haas forced to bat away suggestions that Esteban Ocon was headed for the exit door, and Max Verstappen’s future – both in F1 and the Red Bull team – has been a topic of continued speculation.<\/p>\n
2026 Canadian Grand Prix Friday schedule<\/p>\n
Qualifying: 9pm BST – 10pm BST<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KEY MOMENTSRussell wins after a tense battle with AntonelliAntonelli subdued by Wolff in heated radio exchangeRussell snatches pole…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":690169,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-690168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=690168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/690169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=690168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=690168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=690168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}