George Russell was still wheel-to-wheel with his teammate on lap 30 at the Canadian Grand Prix back in May when everything inside his Mercedes just stopped. He and teammate Kimi Antonelli had traded the lead since lap 13 through the hairpin, at one point banging wheels hard enough that both had to run wide and hand the place back. Then Russell’s power unit gave out completely, mid-corner.
“Everything went off, the engine and the electronics. The lot,” he said afterwards. “I’m lost for words.” It was his first “did not finish” in 38 races. He threw his headrest across the track, slammed his fists into the car, then walked away, whipping his gloves to the ground.
Canada Win Inspires Antonelli’s March to the Title
That collapse handed Antonelli his fourth consecutive win, making him the first driver in Formula 1 history to take his first four Grand Prix in a row, and the first Italian since Alberto Ascari in 1952 to string four together at all. “It was a really fun battle to be fair with George,” the nineteen-year-old said on the podium. “It would have been a very cool battle but, I mean, we take it.”
Kimi Antonelli won the #MonacoGP wire to wire
That’s the type of season it’s been for the 19 year old 🏎️ https://t.co/Fa1ep2dpMV
— Bovada (@BovadaOfficial) June 7, 2026
Canada was the fourth of five straight wins that culminated in Monaco. A fortnight after that, his car died with second place in sight in Barcelona, but the young prodigy has gone from strength to strength ever since.
Three months later, on home turf at Monza, Antonelli made the gods look right. He started his home Italian Grand Prix nineteenth after an engine penalty and proceeded to overtake everyone, including Russell late on, to become the first home winner in sixty years. It left him 66 points clear of his teammate with ten rounds still to run, a margin that has turned this championship into a countdown, and the latest betting odds confirm it.
Top online sports betting sites now make Antonelli an incredibly short-priced 3/25 favorite to become the youngest world champion ever in the coming weeks and months. If he does exactly that, it will mark a return to trend for Canadian Grand Prix winners. Last year, Russell won in Montreal, but it was Lando Norris who took the world title, marking the first time since 2018 that the man who stood on the top step of the podium at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve didn’t end up with the World Championship.
So, who were the last three men to do exactly what Antonelli looks set to do in 2026? Let’s take a look.
Max Verstappen
There’s a version of Max Verstappen’s career where Montreal is simply the place he goes to remind everyone who’s in charge. In 2022, he arrived leading Sergio Perez 150 points to 129, survived a treacherous wet qualifying, and held off a hard-charging Carlos Sainz by under a second to stretch his lead to 46 on the way to a second straight title clinched at a chaotic Suzuka. By 2023, he was six wins from eight races deep into a season nobody else was contesting, and Montreal barely counted as a contest: pole to flag, Red Bull’s hundredth win, level with Ayrton Senna’s career tally, his lead swelling to 69 en route to nineteen wins from twenty-two that year.
Only in 2024 did the place bite back. Leclerc’s shock Monaco win had trimmed his lead to 31, and Norris grabbed the race lead before a safety car handed it back; Verstappen snatched it again with a decisive final stop and held on by 3.879 seconds as both Ferraris retired. A fourth straight title followed anyway, sealed two rounds early in Las Vegas.
Lewis Hamilton
Lewis Hamilton’s relationship with this place has always run warmer, three wins with three completely different textures. In 2015, he arrived ten points up on Nico Rosberg after a Monaco blunder had cost him a certain win, and Montreal restored order: pole to flag, a comfortable Mercedes one-two, before going on to wrap up his third title with three races to spare months later.
Two years on from that, it was pure theatre: Verstappen sliced across Vettel’s front wing at the start, wrecking the championship leader’s afternoon before it had begun, and Hamilton cruised to a Grand Slam, pole, fastest lap, every lap led, winning by 19.7 seconds and cutting Vettel’s lead to just 12 points. Then came 2019, the ugly one. Vettel crossed the line first, only to be handed a five-second penalty for forcing Hamilton toward the wall as he rejoined from the grass.
“They are stealing the race from us,” Vettel raged on the radio. The crowd booed Hamilton so loudly it visibly startled him on the podium, even as he equaled Schumacher’s record of seven Canadian wins and stretched his lead to 29 points on his way to a sixth title.
Sebastian Vettel
Sebastian Vettel sat in his cockpit on the cool-down lap in 2011, replaying a single corner. He’d led almost all of that year’s Canadian Grand Prix, untouchable through a two-hour rain delay, and then on the very last lap, he ran wide under pressure from a fast-recovering Jenson Button and lost it all in half a second. “It was probably the only mistake I had in the whole race,” he said, hollowed out. “To lead and then give it away is not the sweetest feeling.” That corner would take him two years to exorcise.
Vettel ruled over Formula One between 2010 and 2013, winning four straight world titles. But in each of the first three of those titles, he failed to pick up the win in Canada. Then, he returned in 2013 twenty-one points clear of Kimi Raikkonen, twenty-nine clear of Fernando Alonso, and left nothing to chance: pole to flag, 14.4 seconds clear of Alonso by the finish.
“Yes! At last we have won in Canada!” he screamed into his radio the moment he crossed the line, years of frustration draining out in real time. His lead stretched to 36 points, the platform for nine straight wins that closed the season and a fourth title clinched at the Indian Grand Prix with three rounds still to run.