Given George Russell outscored Kimi Antonelli by 169 points across their first season as Mercedes Formula 1 team-mates, the current 43-point gap with at least 17 rounds remaining should be surmountable.

But this isn’t the 2025-spec Russell vs Antonelli power balance anymore.

And though Russell took both Montreal poles, won the sprint and was leading the Canadian Grand Prix when his car failed, he did not look massively quicker at any stage of the weekend. Antonelli actually looked like he had better underlying pace throughout - and that’s a concern.

Russell batted away his awful Miami round, calling it a bogey track - so to then have to fight tooth and nail to just about edge Antonelli at a Russell stronghold (he’s taken every Montreal pole since 2024 and won there last year) wasn’t exactly a swashbuckling return to form.

Montreal does tend to flatter the car that’s following as it’s a big advantage to have the tow, and the extra bit of recharging permitted in 2026 if you’re within a second of the car in front, but Antonelli was at the very least on Russell’s pace throughout.

Moreover, the points just aren’t coming. Russell can’t buy a non-sprint win at the moment. He’s complained about his misfortune a few times already this year, with a technical problem in qualifying in China where he was on top that weekend, and a badly timed safety car that dropped him back behind Antonelli in Japan.

He could, maybe should, have won in Canada. But instead he’s had to watch Antonelli rack up his fourth win in a row. No wonder he feels a bit hard done by and like “the gods don’t want me to be in this fight”, as he put it.

That’s also why he reacted so emotionally to the retirement - flinging his headrest out of the car onto the track, and getting himself into trouble with the FIA as a result, with a suspended €5,000 fine for what was termed an ‘unsafe act’.

Clearly, beating Antonelli once is hard enough. Russell needs to do it seven times in a row just to guarantee getting back in the championship lead. With Mercedes still more likely than not to be first and second unless they get in their own way, Russell can expect that if he does win it’ll likely be Antonelli following him home and minimising the points loss.

Antonelli’s step is similar to what Oscar Piastri did from his year two in F1 to year three, to put Lando Norris in so much trouble in 2025. But that same example carries an obvious warning, though. Russell was right to call this Antonelli's "to lose" - but it's very, very early in a long season to write anything off, and Piastri went from strong championship favourite at the end of August last year to only third in the final standings.

There's a lot further to go in this season for Antonelli than when Piastri's title bid crumbled, too. Plus, Antonelli is still messy in his execution, and this weekend was guilty of some unnecessary team-mate belligerence that could bite him at some point.

All that’s to say it’s round 5 of 22 - maybe more if one of the cancelled Middle Eastern races gets re-added. And there’ll surely be more swings between now and the end of the year.

But perhaps the most relevant point to make about Russell is the odd swing won’t be enough. Antonelli looks like a formidable opponent. For all the talk in pre-season and back in Australia that Russell was the clear favourite and had learned how to maximise these new engines and rules so quickly, Antonelli looks extremely at home with F1 2026 himself.

He is quick, a nuisance, aggressive - and at his best he’s been simply too good for Russell to match.