The race George Russell must win. Plus: Why we're all Max Verstappen-obsessed

Can George Russell win the Canadian GP and help control the narrative around Mercedes? Mark Thompson / Getty Images Share articlePrime Tire Newsletter | This is The Athletic’s F1 newsletter. Sign up here to receive Prime Tire directly in your inbox twice a week during the season and weekly in the offseason. Welcome back to Prime Tire, where today I’m looking forward to this weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix — always a highlight of the Formula 1 calendar. The three-week gap from Miami to now has a spring break-like feeling. It’s weird to think that had the main race day in Florida been washed out by severe thunderstorms, then there would have been just one sprint race in an eight-week run. Thankfully that didn’t happen, and now there’s more F1 action coming up, as well as plenty to digest from the paddock in recent days. I’m Alex, and Madeline Coleman will be along later. After writing that headline above, I can just hear Mercedes boss Toto Wolf: “We just really need to stay calm here.” Or: “All of us collectively that are close to him, we need to keep re-emphasizing and repeating the message. This is a long game, he has a killer of a teammate, who is extremely fast. The others are catching up in performance. And we want to play the long game.” Much of that familiar feeling is because it’s what I heard Wolff say in his post-race media briefing in the aftermath of Kimi Antonelli’s Miami victory — although he initially was asked about what the 19-year-old Italian worked on over the winter to be so good right now. But it’s also because Mercedes will no doubt again try to dim down narratives that others (including the media) want to highlight in this title battle. Yes, Montreal is just race five of 22 (or potentially 23, or maybe even 24). There’s a very long way to go in this championship.  Although Antonelli seemed solid since his shaky start in Australia, he could crumble in exactly the same way Oscar Piastri did at McLaren last year, when Lando Norris continually kept himself within reach of his teammate. Right now, how similar the 2025 and 2026 seasons started — in terms of an intra-team title battle and how interlopers thrust themselves into each contest — stands out. Now, as Russell is finding out, the regular race-start threat from Ferrari and the resurgence of both McLaren and Verstappen in Miami mean any additional slips will make the championship-fighting odds that much smaller (as Antonelli discovered in Australia, too). Heading into this weekend’s event, you’ll hear this a lot, and Mercedes and Russell will no doubt try to play it down. But the Montreal race really matters for both drivers with the Silver Arrows squad in 2026. Russell won this race commandingly last year. And he showed great potential in Montreal in 2023 (before he crashed) and 2024 (when he took pole and led the race early on before a series of errors). He just does well at a track that, in the past, was all about choosing the right wing levels to avoid carrying too much drag on the long straights, but still gives a driver enough confidence through elevated downforce levels to attack the corner curbs and save as much time as possible. How that translates to how the new cars and their ridiculously complex engines need to be driven to be their fastest will become clear soon enough … The lesson of the McLaren title fight in 2025 is that these battles do happen, and they can swing championships pretty wildly. For Antonelli, victory in Canada would sustain his momentum, and soften the blow of any potential dramas or crashes later in the season. If Russell can’t defeat Antonelli at a track where he’s done very well in the past, compared to Miami where he has had a harder time historically (although it should be noted Russell finished third in the Miami GP last year), then the narrative will stay that he’s really in trouble in 2026 … no matter how hard Wolff and co. try to say otherwise. After the Miami GP, Lewis Hamilton was clear: He’s not using Ferrari’s simulator to prepare ahead of the Canadian GP. The seven-time world champion’s Miami weekend was trickier than he anticipated, despite Ferrari having the most upgrades of all the teams. He secured seventh in the sprint race and qualified sixth for the grand prix. But contact with Franco Colapinto’s Alpine on the opening lap resulted in damage that cost Hamilton’s car performance. But the seven-time world champion already felt the car setup Ferrari had coming into the weekend — based on data from its simulator — didn’t work as anticipated, and this quickly put him on the back foot. Sims have become an important part of race weekend prep and car development for F1 teams, but they’re not perfect tools. Some in-person racing elements, such as G-forces, can’t be replicated. “I don’t like simulators in general, but I sit at the simulator every week in the build-up, working on correlation constantly,” Hamilton said. “You go on it, you prepare for the track, you drive it and you get the car setup to a certain place, and then you come to the track and that setup doesn’t work.” Time will tell if opting against using the simulator ahead of Canada works or not for Hamilton. Mercedes is expected to bring a bigger upgrade package to Montreal, and it could widen the performance gap across the top four teams. That’s despite Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull all seemingly taking steps forward in Miami. It struck me lately that Patrick Iversen and I talk about Verstappen a lot in PT. So far in 2026, there have been six sends dedicated to the Dutchman’s various exploits, words or developments at his Red Bull team. And five of those have come since the Japanese GP at the end of March. Verstappen is the driver of the current era. Even if he’s at the mercy of his car’s ultimate potential (as is the case for every F1 driver). To many, he’s the best driver. To others, he’s not — but he has to be a part of any debate about who really is best, given his undeniable form since his breakthrough F1 win in 2016. And from his position as a four-time world champion, his actions dominate media discussion.  In fact if you take away the focus on the new engines in 2026 — about which Verstappen’s feelings have influenced current debate — there would be rather a lack of narratives for F1 devotees to obsess over. And Verstappen’s activities away from the track have risen in prominence, both because of the big gap in the calendar mentioned above, and because motor racing fans do like it when drivers compete across categories. So, with that particularly in mind, here’s how Verstappen did in his first attempt to win the Nürburgring 24 Hours sports car race at the fearsome 12.9 mile track in Germany’s Eifel region: 🤓 In more simulator news, it’s been revealed that Alpine installed a new simulator at its Enstone factory ahead of the 2026 season starting. As Madeline said, this technology is a pivotal part of F1 car development in the modern era, especially given how heavily the teams are restricted on what they can test away from races. ✈️ Luke Smith analyzed McLaren boss Zak Brown’s push for the FIA to clamp down on multi-team ownership in F1 (think Red Bull and Racing Bulls, and potentially Mercedes and a chunk of Alpine). 🏎 Hamilton has become a patron of the revamped museum at the Le Mans track that hosts the legendary 24-hour sports car endurance race. He’s never entered it, but the museum is now housing lots of cars from across motorsports, including the 2018 Mercedes that the Briton took to his fifth of seven F1 world titles. 📫 Love Prime Tire? Check out The Athletic’s other newsletters. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms