2025 Canadian GP talking points: Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris clash, George Russell delivers Mercedes’ first win of the season, Kimi Antonelli makes history, and more

After a dramatic European triple-header, F1 returned on Sunday, June 15 for the Canadian Grand Prix, held at the iconic Gilles-Villeneuve Circuit in Montreal. 

With the McLaren drivers finally clashing, Mercedes’ remarkable recovery from a poor European season, and all sorts of strategies up and down the grid, the race gave F1 fans plenty to discuss once again.  

Sports News Blitz’s F1 writer Henry Eccles takes a look at five key talking points to come out of the 2025 Canadian Grand Prix. 

Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris finally collide 

McLaren had said it themselves, it was a matter of ‘when,’ not ‘if.’ 

With three laps to go of the 70-lap race in Montreal, Lando Norris had been hunting team-mate Oscar Piastri down. 

At the iconic hairpin, Norris made a daring lunge on the Aussie to momentarily take P4, but a better exit and some brave late braking of his own saw Piastri back ahead by the final ‘Wall of Champions’ chicane.

But this time, Piastri’s exit was compromised, and so Norris was right under his rear wing down the pit straight to start Lap 67, following his team-mate on the racing line. 

As they flew towards Turn 1, Norris jinked to the left, looking to exploit a gap that simply was not there and drove into the back of Piastri - the collision ripped off the Briton’s front wing and his suspension broke as he knocked into the pit wall.  

Immediately, Norris took responsibility for the incident when asked if he was alright by race engineer Will Joseph: “Yep, I'm sorry. It's all my bad, all my fault. Unlucky, sorry. Stupid from me."

Piastri was lucky to escape unscathed and went on to finish in P4 - the first time a McLaren has not appeared on the podium this season, but a decent result for the Aussie considering the issues the MCL39 appeared to have around Montreal. 

Piastri had qualified in P4 on Sunday, and up until the incident, Norris was on course to recover very well from a lowly P7 grid start. 

The collision bore startling similarities to a 2011 intra-McLaren accident in Montreal between Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton, although on that occasion, Hamilton was more side-by-side with his team-mate than Norris was. 

After the race, Norris expressed further disappointment in himself: "Rule number one is not to make contact with your team-mate, and that's what I did.

"McLaren is my family and I race for them every single weekend and try and do well for them on and off the track. So when I let them down like this and make a fool of myself like I did today, I have a lot of regret.

"I'm not proud of myself, I feel bad, so apologies to all of them.”

Costing himself 10 points, another error of judgement from Norris now leaves him 22 points off championship leader Piastri, with Max Verstappen also gaining ground on him after his P2 finish. 

However, while the collision is a flashpoint in the championship battle, McLaren are by no means treating this as a crisis, having expected a clash between their two drivers under their ‘Papaya Rules’ of racing. 

While Team Principal Andrea Stella hinted towards some ‘tough’ conversations, he was pleased to see Norris take responsibility for the incident, and expressed a desire to ‘preserve our parity and equality between our two drivers.’ 

George Russell delivers Mercedes’ first win of the season, while Kimi Antonelli makes history

It was the perfect weekend for Mercedes, desperately needed after a torrid European triple-header. 

On Saturday, with cooler temperatures suiting Mercedes, George Russell repeated his Canada 2024 heroics and took pole position yet again, setting up a tense opening lap with arch-nemesis Verstappen on the front row.  

Come Sunday’s race start, Russell got away cleanly from Verstappen, and stayed in the lead convincingly throughout a Grand Prix that featured different strategies up and down the grid and a late Safety Car caused by the McLaren collision. 

It was a race we have become accustomed to this season from the Silver Arrows’ No.1 - nothing too fancy, staying mostly out of sight, but usually racking up important points for his team. 

A post-race protest from Red Bull against Russell for ‘driving erratically’ and ‘displaying unsportsmanlike behaviour’ under the late Safety Car conditions did threaten to take his victory away, but was ultimately rejected by FIA stewards. 

Russell’s win at Montreal - Mercedes’ first in 2025 - meant the Brit has now finished on the podium more times this season (five) than in all of last campaign (four), and helped secure the team P2 in the Constructors’ championship. 

Speaking after the race, Russell said: “It’s amazing to be back on the top step, obviously the last time for us was back in Vegas.”

“I thought last year for us was a victory lost, and then obviously we got the victory today probably due to the incredible pole lap yesterday.

“Amazing day for the team. Thanks to everyone back at the factory for working to get us back fighting for victories, it feels good.”

On the other side of the Mercedes garage, things were equally joyous as 18-year-old Kimi Antonelli came home in P3. 

The Italian rookie had qualified P4, but skipped ahead of McLaren’s Piastri on the opening lap, and did well to defend his podium position as the pacy McLarens advanced towards the end. 

The result means Antonelli is now the third youngest driver ever to finish on the podium, only behind Verstappen and Lance Stroll.

“It was so stressful but super happy,” Antonelli said post-race.

“At the start I managed to jump into P3 and I just stayed up there at the front. On the last stint, I pushed a bit too hard behind Max and I killed the front left a bit. I struggled at the end but really happy to bring the podium home.”

After such a dominant weekend, many ought to believe Mercedes have now turned a corner and expect more of the same, but Team Principal Toto Wolff made sure to manage expectations in his post-race assessments. 

“I’m never confident, because the swings in performance are still there,” Wolff said. 

“We've seen it last year that on some tracks, it wasn't even close to who was second, but we dominated throughout the weekend, and that's a little bit the pattern we have seen here.

“Austria is going to be a different ballgame, different track layout, different challenges, so all of our eyes and brains are concentrated on Austria now. This is done, tick the box.”

MORE FOR YOU: Ferrari’s nail-biting double: Le Mans hat-trick glory vs F1 Canadian GP chaos

Another lonely weekend for Lewis Hamilton, while Charles Leclerc rues mistakes

At Montreal, Ferrari drivers Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton finished P5 and P6, respectively, to cap off a weekend plagued by both speculation over Team Principal Fred Vasseur’s future and on-track issues. 

Despite it being expected that Montreal would be a more competitive circuit for the Scuderia, Hamilton could only qualify P5 on Saturday - over 0.6s behind former Mercedes team-mate Russell. 

The seven-time world champion’s race was made more complicated early on, after he collided with a groundhog on Lap Nine, an incident that left Hamilton ‘devastated’ after the race. 

The damage caused by the collision was said to have cost Hamilton 20 points of downforce (around 0.5s a lap), and saw him 22 seconds behind his team-mate before finishing under the Safety Car. 

"I was feeling pretty decent until then. I got a good start, held position, I was holding onto the group," Hamilton told Sky Sports F1.

"I was managing the tyres well. I was feeling optimistic. I didn't see it happen but I heard I hit a groundhog.

“That's devastating because I love animals and I'm so sad about it. That's horrible. It's never happened to me before.”

Team-mate Leclerc, meanwhile, again showed glimpses of strong race pace, but had given himself a lot of work to do after crashing in FP1, missing FP2, and qualifying P8. 

Like Norris, Leclerc started on the Hard tyres and progressed through the field as others pitted. 

On Lap 29, however, Ferrari decided to pit the Monegasque driver and fitted fresher Hard tyres, meaning he would have to pit again to use the medium compound. 

It was a decision that angered Leclerc at the time, he later took the lead of the race only to drop back to P5 after his second stop. 

"I thought I had done a good job with the tyres at first, then I was seeing the Medium runners were pretty confident to push on those tyres,” Leclerc told Sky Sports F1. 

"I was confident the one-stop was the way to go. But we decided to do otherwise. I don't have the information inside the car, so we stick to two stops. I tried my best and P5 was the best I could do.

While reaffirming his belief that a one-stop strategy was the right call, Leclerc ultimately ruled that his mistake in practice, and a tricky Q3, were what let his race down. 

"We paid the price of my mistake in FP1 and traffic in qualifying. I'm probably the first to blame. Strategy maybe could have been better but the starting position is what held us back."

Thanks to the difficult weekend at Montreal, coupled with the big points score for Mercedes, Ferrari are now back down to third in the Constructors’ standings, 16 points behind the Silver Arrows and just 21 ahead of Red Bull. 

Williams fail to meet expectations

After a difficult weekend at the Spanish Grand Prix, where Williams failed to score a point for only the second time in 2025, the Grove team were expected to bounce back in Canada. 

And the weekend did get off to a good start, both cars were in the top three in FP1, and stayed within the top 10 throughout the other practice sessions. 

But it all started to unravel in qualifying and the Grand Prix. 

While Alex Albon lined up on Sunday in P9, team-mate Carlos Sainz was all the way down in P17 thanks to Isack Hadjar impeding in Q1 - the Frenchman’s three-place grid penalty no consolation to Sainz who had it all to do in the race. 

In fairness to the Spaniard, his race was an impressive one - a well-executed one-stop strategy, and a bit of help from Norris’ retirement, saw him rescue a point for Williams despite managing an issue with his car.

“We did a good job to bring the car home and save a point but, as a team, we need to avoid these situations,” Sainz said post-race.

“We didn’t show our maximum potential this weekend for one reason or the other and with such a tight field, it obviously affects the final outcome. We’ll regroup and go back at it again in Europe in a couple of weeks.”

Albon, meanwhile, had a real shocker. 

On the opening lap, the Thai-Brit driver was defending his P9 starting position against former team-mate Franco Colapinto, but found himself bouncing across the grass at Turn 8 and losing three positions. 

With Albon chewing into his medium tyres during his first stint, Williams then missed the optimal window to pit the former Red Bull driver, forcing him to stay out longer and lose ground to his rivals while sliding around on old tyres. 

When he did finally pit, the damage had been done - Albon rejoined the track in P20 and quickly got stuck behind a long DRS train of cars. 

Then on Lap 49, Albon’s race was over. 

The 29-year-old had been suffering a power unit problem throughout the Grand Prix, and was eventually forced to retire, his second successive DNF. 

Reflecting on his race, Albon said: 

“We retired with the PU issue, but the race was already over for us. I struggled on the first lap, and then we tried to make a one stop work, but with the graining today it was really hard to manage the tyres.

“Race strategy is also something we are usually strong at, but we struggled today and that’s not to blame the team, but it just wasn’t quite there, so we’ll have a look at it and come back stronger next time."

With 27 points separating them from joint-sixth Haas and Racing Bulls, Williams are still firmly the ‘best of the rest’ in P5, but will hope to have fewer weekends like Montreal as the tight midfield battle rumbles on behind them.

ALSO ON SNB: Women’s Euro 2025: Seven players to watch at the tournament

Veterans Fernando Alonso and Nico Hülkenberg extract the maximum 

Since Aston Martin’s upgrade at Imola, Fernando Alonso has started to look more and more like himself. 

In the last round, at his home Grand Prix, Alonso dragged his Aston to P9 to end an eight-race streak without any points, his worst ever start to an F1 season.  

In Montreal, the two-time world champion pulled off another impressive qualifying result, finishing Saturday in P6 ahead of Leclerc’s Ferrari and Norris’ McLaren. 

With two much faster cars behind him, and an Aston Martin that has let him down in terms of race pace, the Spaniard had a tough Sunday ahead of him. 

And while he quickly lost ground to the cars behind, Alonso drove a strong race to get the most out of his AMR25, and was rewarded with a P7 finish after Norris’ retirement.

"It was a good race for us today,” the 43-year-old said. 

“I felt happy with the car and as expected managing the tyres was difficult. We went into the race and knew eighth position would be more our realistic pace and I couldn't keep the faster cars behind.”

“It seems our race pace is not as competitive as qualifying and it's something which we need to look into going forward.

“Let's see if anything comes from the investigations later and we'll look ahead to Austria and our home race in Silverstone."

Another F1 veteran who built on an excellent result in Spain was Sauber’s Nico Hülkenberg, who stunned in Barcelona with a P5 finish. 

The 37-year-old lined up on Sunday just out of the points in P11, but took advantage of Albon and Colapinto’s opening lap scuffle and jumped up to P9.

From then on, Hülkenberg managed his tyres effectively and maintained consistent pace, eventually getting bumped up to P8 after the McLaren clash. 

After the race, the German driver expressed further confidence that the upgrades introduced by Sauber in Spain are ‘really paying dividends.’ 

“We’ve now shown competitive pace at two very different circuits which also means the recent update has been a clear step forward. 

“Especially under race condition our car was more consistent, better balanced, and overall much more predictable to drive. That kind of stability really allows you to push when it counts.”

Hülkenberg’s top-eight finish was his third of 2025, and made him the first Sauber driver to score in consecutive races since Valtteri Bottas in 2022 when racing under the Alfa Romeo name. 

After a week off, F1 will return to Europe for the Austrian Grand Prix weekend on June 27-29, with all the action live on Sky Sports F1. 

The race itself gets underway on Sunday at 2pm UK time.

READ NEXT: Tennis news: How the sport is growing in popularity, from club memberships to local parks