Inside Merc drivers\u2019 simmering rivalry; signs of life for McLaren as raceday \u2018chaos\u2019 looms<\/a><\/p>\nPole position qualifier George Russell of Great Britain.Source: AFP<\/p>\n
Earlier on Saturday, pre-season title favourite Russell delivered a consummate lights-to-flag drive to win the sprint race and trim Antonelli\u2019s championship lead.<\/p>\n
The 28-year-old came home 1.272 seconds clear of Norris after resisting a spirited attack by the teenage Italian, who finished third, in the early part of the 23-lap race.<\/p>\n
Piastri came home fourth ahead of both Ferraris with Charles Leclerc finishing fifth ahead of seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton.<\/p>\n
Four-time champion Max Verstappen finished seventh for Red Bull ahead of Racing Bulls rookie Arvid Lindblad.<\/p>\n
It was the first sprint race held at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve and was a memorable one, with the scrap between Russell and Antonelli requiring an intervention from Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff, telling the precocious Italian to cool off and stop talking on the team radio.<\/p>\n
The incident came on lap six when Antonelli, 19, tried a move around the outside of Turn One, but Russell defended stoutly forcing the Italian to run off with a muscular defence of his leading position.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was very naughty,\u201d said Antonelli, who accused Russell of pushing him off.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat should be a penalty. I was alongside the mirror.\u201d<\/p>\n
His experienced race engineer Peter Bonnington told him to calm down and concentrate, but Antonelli was still fuming after the race.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we race like that, it is good to know,\u201d said the teenager before Wolff told him: \u201cKimi, we don\u2019t talk about this on the radio — we do it internally.<\/p>\n
\u201cConcentrate on the driving, please, not on the radio moaning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Antonelli continued: \u201cI need to review on that because I was quite well alongside him at turn one.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it was a good battle.\u201d<\/p>\n
Russell later revealed that he had a \u201cgood chat\u201d with Antonelli about the incident.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are both racing drivers. We both know what to do, we both respect one another,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will go racing and hope it\u2019s just a battle between the two of us but we saw how competitive everyone was today.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd tomorrow looks to be wet which will be a whole new challenge, so it\u2019s not what we are thinking about. We just want to ensure we are on the top step.\u201d<\/p>\n
Antonelli\u2019s aggression and mishap gave Norris his opportunity, having had a perfect view of the battle ahead of him.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was good to watch them go at it for a little while,\u201d Norris said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we were there to pick up the pieces when it happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a frantic race, Norris showed he had the speed and resolve to resist the clamour around Antonelli\u2019s spectacular run of successes after three consecutive wins had lifted him 20 points clear in the title race after Miami.<\/p>\n
The field was tightly packed with several close scraps, including the late moves that saw Piastri fight his way past Hamilton, who smacked the \u2018wall of champions\u2019 and slipped from fourth to sixth.<\/p>\n
Antonelli also made a late bid to steal back into second place with another attempt to pass Norris on the outside of Turn One, but went off and had to give the place back after running through a run-off area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain\u2019s George Russell powered to pole position for the Canadian Grand Prix ahead of Mercedes teammate Kimi Antonelli…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":691070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[2620,12295,337224,14212,64,63,100312,21763,13275,337223,817,813,816,3875,876,1737,825,20588,938,68795,337222,2111,22305,337225,85,22764,36772,193104,22294,2753],"class_list":["post-691069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-agence-france-presse","tag-andrea-kimi-antonelli","tag-angry-team-mate","tag-arvid-lindblad","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bogey-track","tag-championship-lead","tag-charles-leclerc","tag-experienced-race-engineer","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-george-russell","tag-gilles-villeneuve","tag-lando-norris","tag-max-verstappen","tag-mercedes-benz-ag","tag-montreal","tag-peter-bonnington","tag-pre-season-title-favourite","tag-quebec","tag-seven-time-champion","tag-spectacular-run","tag-sports","tag-sprint-race","tag-team-radio","tag-teenage-italian","tag-title-race","tag-world-champion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691069","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=691069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/691070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=691069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=691069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=691069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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