2025 Canadian GP preview: Max Verstappen’s penalty worries, Lance Stroll’s injury battle, Mercedes look to recover and more burning questions

Following a well-earned rest off the back of a chaotic European triple-header, F1 returns for the Canadian Grand Prix on Sunday, June 15. 

With all eyes on Max Verstappen, a race against time for Lance Stroll, and Mercedes hoping to bounce back from a torrid European leg, there is a lot to look out for at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal. 

Sports News Blitz’s F1 writer Henry Eccles considers five burning questions In the build-up to the 2025 Canadian Grand Prix. 

Will Max Verstappen obey his team’s orders? 

After his highly controversial collision with George Russell in Barcelona, Max Verstappen picked up three penalty points on his FIA Super Licence, increasing his total to 11. 

And with 12 points within a 12-month period enough for one race suspension, Verstappen is now on thin ice for the upcoming Canadian and Austrian Grand Prix. 

Following the completion of the latter, the Dutchman will have the two points he received for a collision with McLaren’s Lando Norris in Austria last year chalked off. 

But first, he has to get through Canada cleanly in order to avoid what would be a huge embarrassment if he were to miss Red Bull’s home race in Austria. 

To do this, Red Bull’s senior advisor Helmut Marko has revealed the four-time world champion will be given orders in Montreal. 

Writing in his column for Speedweek, Marko said: “Now he mustn’t do anything wrong over the next two race weekends, and of course he will be told not to do anything rash.”

“It would be a disaster if he couldn’t start in Austria.

“But we don’t expect that to happen, because it’s not really the case that Max does anything wrong in every race. The first penalty points will be cancelled after Austria.”

At the same time, however, Verstappen is now 49 points behind Drivers’ championship leader Oscar Piastri in P3, with Red Bull also sitting in lowly P4 in the Constructors’ standings.

How will the four-time world champion balance the need to stay out of trouble with the desperate need to score big points for his team and keep his individual title hopes alive? 

What is happening with Lance Stroll?

Despite qualifying P14 for the Spanish Grand Prix, Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll was forced to withdraw from the race as a result of hand and wrist pain stemming from his cycling accident back in 2023.

The Canadian is understood to have been driving through the pain for the last six weeks, but was advised to undergo a procedure to get the issue fixed.

The procedure was done in Barcelona, overseen by Dr. Xavier Mir, a well-renowned surgeon based in MotoGP who helped Stroll miraculously recover from his 2023 accident in just two weeks. 

This allowed the Aston driver to compete in the season-opener in Bahrain, a race in which he pulled off a seriously impressive P6 finish. 

And while nothing has yet been confirmed, The Race have reported that the early prognosis has been promising, and without any unexpected complications, Stroll should be fit to make his home race weekend. 

Things could still get complicated, however, if the 26-year-old gets into the car for FP1 and feels too uncomfortable to race. 

Aston Martin’s two reserve drivers, Felipe Drugovich and Stoffel Vandoorne, are already committed to the Le Mans 24-hour race taking place over the same weekend as the Grand Prix.

One possible option the Silverstone team could turn to is Mercedes reserve driver Valtteri Bottas, who is available to fill in if required thanks to a deal between the Silver Arrows and its customer teams. 

A downside to that for Aston Martin would be that Bottas is due to serve a five-place grid penalty upon his F1 return, due to his collision with Kevin Magnussen in the 2024 season finale at Abu Dhabi.

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Is Franco Colapinto already under pressure at Alpine? 

At round seven of the 2025 season, after replacing Jack Doohan with Franco Colapinto at Imola, Alpine chief Flavio Briatore wanted three things from the Argentine. 

Be fast, don’t crash, and score points. 

So far, Colapinto has failed to deliver on all fronts. 

After a hefty crash at the exit of Turn 3 during qualifying in Imola, and without any points to his name in the three Grands Prix since, the 22-year-old has not displayed enough pace in the A525. 

In Spain, while team-mate Pierre Gasly qualified and finished impressively in P8, Colapinto was out in Q1 and finished P15 as the third last driver to cross the line. 

Having billed the Grand Prix as Colapinto’s ‘first real race,’ Briatore admitted he is ‘not happy at all’ with his performances so far. 

While Briatore did add the caveat that Colapinto is a young driver with ‘a lot of pressure from all directions,’ he refused to guarantee the Argentine would complete the season with Alpine. 

The Italian boss could not even promise that Colapinto would get the five races Alpine originally set out for him when they announced his swap with Doohan.

“I don’t know, honestly,” Briatore said post-race.

“I never tell five races, three races, four races, one race. We see.

“If Colapinto is performing, he’s driving the car. If not, we’ll see. 2025 is a year we need to prepare ourselves for 2026. So whatever experiment I need doing, we’re doing.

“I don’t know at this moment if Franco will stay for the season or not, but let’s see. Depends on the performance. We’re only looking at the performance - nothing else.”

As demonstrated in his nine-race spell with Williams in 2024, Colapinto is clearly a talent, but now the pressure is really on - especially with Alpine not lacking options for 2026 in the likes of academy driver Paul Aron, or free agents Bottas and Sergio Perez.

As Isack Hadjar shines, how long does Yuki Tsunoda really have at Red Bull?

It has been far from easy for Yuki Tsunoda since his switch from sister team Racing Bulls to the second Red Bull seat as Liam Lawson’s replacement. 

But on the face of it, the Japanese driver does not appear to have too much to worry about in the immediate future, with Team Principal Christian Horner vowing to give him more time to perform. 

“I think the only thing that we can do is give him time and support, and try and get a set-up that he’s got confidence in,” Horner said after the Spanish Grand Prix.

“Driving these cars is all about confidence, and that’s what he needs to find. I think he’ll get there.

"He’s fast. He’s just got to piece it all together. We keep seeing flashes of performance. We just need to see him put it all together. I think he’s capable of that.”

After replacing Lawson at Suzuka, Tsunoda initially looked at least like a more reliable pair of hands than the Kiwi, scoring points in three of his first five Grand Prix as a Red Bull driver.

But after a difficult European triple-header, featuring a heavy Q1 crash at Imola, and two pointless weekends in Monaco and Spain, the latter of which saw him qualify P20, pressure is surely starting to mount. 

What will worry Tsunoda most is the red-hot form of his former Racing Bulls team-mate Isack Hadjar, whose European season could not have gone much better. 

A P9 finish for Hadjar at Imola, one place ahead of Tsunoda, was improved upon with P6 and a ‘perfectly executed’ strategy at Monaco, and then another impressive P7 points score in Barcelona.

Such performances for Red Bull’s junior team have certainly not gone unnoticed by Horner, whose refusal to rule out yet another Red Bull driver swap this season ought to concern Tsunoda. 

“I think I’m going to take a leaf out of Flavio’s book and say, ‘I don’t want to answer it.’

“Look, it’s early days for Yuki. He’s still settling in. He’s been in Q3, scored points, he’s scored points from the pit lane.

“He’s had a few incidents as well, so he has a long way to go. We’ll decide. We’ve got plenty of time on our side.”

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Can Mercedes recover from their European nightmare? 

The European triple-header was one to forget for Mercedes. 

At Imola, George Russell claimed the team had suffered their ‘worst day’ in years after his P7 finish - his first outside the top five in 2025. 

On the other side of the garage, things were even worse, as Andrea Kimi Antonelli was forced to retire on lap 46 due to a throttle issue, despite running in the points throughout. 

In Monaco, neither Russell nor Antonelli were able to make Q3 in qualifying, a first for Mercedes in over three years. 

Antonelli crashed at the Nouvelle chicane in Q1, leaving him in P15 come Sunday’s race start, while Russell was just ahead in P14 after he lost power in Q2. 

With Monaco such a difficult track for overtaking, and the new mandatory two-pit-stop rule failing to create any meaningful opportunities, Mercedes found themselves stuck out of the points - Russell and Antonelli finished P11 and P18, respectively. 

At the last race in Barcelona, despite the controversial collision with Verstappen, Russell improved things with a P4 finish. 

However, Antonelli hit engine trouble again - a power unit failure on Lap 55 beached the rookie in the gravel, forcing him to retire once more.

The Silver Arrows scored just 18 points in the three European races and hope to bounce back in Montreal, with upgrades expected at a track that has been kind to them historically. 

Mercedes’ Technical Director James Allison said: “It is a track where we’ve tended to find our feet relatively well in the past. So I’m looking forward to it. We’ve got one or two new bits to take with us and we’ll see how we get on.”

Allison also believes cooler track temperatures in Canada will help his team, with warm conditions proving to be a particular weakness for the Brackley outfit since 2024. 

“Well, that may come towards us, of course, if it is cooler. 

“But I think that more important than the absolute temperature is just the different nature of the challenge in Montreal.

“Big braking circuit, a circuit where it’s relatively harder to get the front and rear axle at the right temperature relative to one another.”

Having lost their P2 place in the Constructors’ standings to Ferrari in Spain, the Silver Arrows have a chance to respond at a happy hunting ground, with Russell securing pole position in Montreal last time out in 2024.

The Canadian GP weekend takes place between June 13-15, with fans able to catch all the action on Sky Sports F1, and the race getting underway on Sunday at 7pm UK time.

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