Kimi Antonelli has made clear that he \u201ccan\u2019t relax\u201d despite moving 43 points clear of Mercedes team mate George Russell in the championship standings after the Canadian Grand Prix.<\/p>\n
Antonelli<\/a> added to wins in China, Japan and Miami by triumphing at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve last weekend, taking full advantage of Russell<\/a>\u2019s terminal technical problems that struck while they were fighting for the lead.<\/p>\n It means Antonelli\u2019s points advantage is bigger than the gap between McLaren<\/a> team mates Lando Norris<\/a> and Oscar Piastri<\/a> ever was in the race for the 2025 title, with F1 now moving on to a busy European phase.<\/p>\n Asked about having a bit of breathing space over Russell going into the next rapid-fire run of events, Antonelli said: \u201cYeah, but to be fair, I\u2019m not thinking about the championship. I\u2019m just focusing on race by race.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s still very early to talk about that, and of course, now I have this gap, but that doesn\u2019t mean I can relax and just take it easier. Instead, I need to keep levelling up and keep raising the bar, because it\u2019s not going to be easy.<\/p>\n \u201cCompetitors are getting closer, and also George is super quick, so definitely I\u2019m just going to try to focus on myself and enjoy the driving, and trying to really drive as fast as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n Antonelli went on to offer some more reflections on his ebbing and flowing battle with Russell over the first half of the Montreal race, which followed a similarly tight scrap in the previous day\u2019s Sprint.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a tough fight,\u201d he commented. \u201cI think a couple of times [it] was maybe a little bit on the edge, but we were going at each other. We were both pushing and we both wanted to win.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was, I think, for everyone watching, pretty entertaining, so definitely the stint was a lot of fun, because we were both pushing on the limit and going for it.\u201d<\/p>\n Antonelli\u2019s latest victory also means Mercedes<\/a> remain unbeaten in 2026, with a sizeable Montreal upgrade package<\/a> appearing to strengthen their advantage at the head of the pack \u2013 though the young Italian is taking nothing for granted.<\/p>\n \u201cTo be fair, we\u2019re not really clear on the package, if I\u2019m being honest, because this weekend was very weird in terms of tyres,\u201d he explained, pointing to the variation in air and track temperatures.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was very difficult to put them in the right window, so I think that was playing a big factor. Just by having the tyre in the right window was helping a lot.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we will have a better picture of the package in the next few races.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kimi Antonelli has made clear that he \u201ccan\u2019t relax\u201d despite moving 43 points clear of Mercedes team mate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":704136,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-704135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704135","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=704135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/704136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=704135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=704135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=704135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}