Mercedes Championship Battle Already More Evil Than Last Year’s

In 2025, McLaren came in fully prepared for its drivers to lead the championship battle. For McLaren, this meant doing the equivalent of writing up a 100-page legal document to try to settle the championship with as little actual conflict as possible. The year's paltry tension and intrigue were achieved by performing elementary arithmetic on points totals and McLaren making some of the worst gaffes you'll see a championship-caliber team make, rather than any true narrative propulsion. By the end of it, one was almost starting to prefer that an asteroid strike earth and put everyone out of their misery—i.e. for Max Verstappen to win the Drivers' Championship. Experiencing Mercedes and its drivers now is like taking a sip of fresh water and only then realizing how parched you'd been all along. In the standings, the championship battle is not particularly close. One Mercedes driver has won the last four races, though perhaps not the one you would have expected going in. Much of the early-season excitement has been the result of that divergence from pre-season expectation, with teenage phenom Kimi Antonelli repeatedly beating presumptive favorite George Russell via dominant pole-to-win conversions. But this Sunday's Canadian Grand Prix finally gave both drivers the opportunity to answer the all-important question: How will they race each other, wheel-to-wheel? The answer: very, very hard. Because the Canadian GP is one of six tortured sprint weekends this year, Saturday provided a spoiler for Sunday's racing. Perhaps some grace must be given here: It did also give us a plea from Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff to Antonelli to concentrate on the driving please, and not on the radio moaning. But despite Wolff admonishing Antonelli for his extensive public complaints, and no doubt experiencing flashbacks to the notoriously acrimonious Lewis Hamilton–Nico Rosberg era of the team, whatever private discussions before Sunday did not diminish the spectacle. Spectators can only be grateful.