Canada Uncorked: Russells Redemption & McLaren Mayhem

The 2025 Canadian Grand Prix delivered drama, redemption, heartbreak, and even a groundhog. In this episode of Trackside Tea, we dive into George Russell’s flawless win, the explosive McLaren teammate clash between Norris and Piastri, and Red Bull’s post-race protest. We’re also talking animals on track, surprise podiums, and what it all means for the championship. As always—no jargon, no gatekeeping, just pure F1 passion.

In This Episode:

Russell's perfect weekend & protest fallout

The Norris/Piastri collision – what really happened

Hamilton’s heartbreaking run-in

Kimi Antonelli’s debut podium

Updated championship standings

My Virtual Safety Tea roundup

TRANSCRIPT:

Hey. Hey. And welcome back to Trackside Tea, your relaxed pit stop for all things F1. No telemetry geekery, just vibes, tea, and race day emotion. I'm Rebecca.

And today, we're rolling through the unforgettable 2025 Canadian Grand Prix. A race packed with redemption, crashes, controversy, and, yes, even a groundhog cameo. Poor little thing.

Russell's redemption. Let's start with the big headline. George Russell took his first win of 2025, pretty much controlling the race from start to finish.

He was very cool, calm, and collected. He was basically very George. Mercedes overall pulled off an epic race among a race full of drama. He took pole to start with this year, as he did last year, but this definitely worked out better for him this time around. He was in the lead for the majority of the race and only dropped down when he needed to go and get his tyres done, and then he just sped back up into the first place again.

Now Max came second, but Red Bull wasn't ready to give up first so easily. They filed a protest claiming George Russell drove erratically under the safety car and was very unsportsmanship like. That's quite a long word, isn't it? Unsportsmanship.

George said he broke where he did for two reasons.

One, to keep to the needed gap between himself and the safety car. It's safety after all. And secondly, to keep temperature of his brakes and tires, which is nothing new or unusual, and it's done by all the drivers when they're following the safety car and should always be expected by the car behind. And what he stated over the radio about Max overtaking him, saying, Max has just overtaken me, was nothing more than a fact. It was clear and concise and nothing else.

It's not like he was saying, oh my god. Max has overtaken me. He should get into trouble. He just stated, Max has overtaken.

But the stewards looked into it and called both drivers and teams up, but eventually dismissed the complaint.

Russell's cool by the book safety car pacing stood its ground. So basically, a clean, calm, cool performance from George Russell capped off with a win on track and the result doubly confirmed of it off track by the stewards. Thank you very much.

On another side, I've just realised I do it here too. When I'm talking about the drivers, I'll sometimes use their first name and sometimes their second. And then when it gets really confusing is if I'm talking about two drivers at the same time and I use things like oh, I say things like Max and Russell had a disagreement and that mixes them up, and then it's really confusing. So I'm sorry if I confuse anybody out there. I'll try and use both names maybe or just one. Either way, it can be very confusing, so I do apologise.

Anyway, how many times can I say anyway in a sentence there? Crikey.

McLaren Mayhem. Not far behind that calm and coolness of George came total chaos. Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, teammates and the two championship front runners collided with just four laps left to go while they were battling for fourth place.

Not even battling for first and second, it was fourth place. This then caused a safety car, which I said in the previous bit about George and Max. This was the safety car that happened on. Now I said in the Spain episode that I predicted there'll be a safety car so far in every race, and it happened again. Admittedly, I did worry that it wasn't gonna happen.

That sounds terrible, worrying that the safety car isn't going to happen. You don't really want the safety car to happen, do you? That's the point.

But, anyway, I was a little bit worried I wasn't gonna get my points for that prediction, because they left it so close to the end of the race. But, unfortunately, this whole issue did hit the team rather hard because Piastri limped home to fourth while Norris was well and truly out.

He immediately owned up to his mistake though, saying over the team radio, I'm sorry. It's all my bad, all my fault, unlucky, sorry, stupid from me. So he did own up to it and put his hands up. Fair play. It was a bit of a silly thing.

He went into the back wheel of Oscar and then went into the wall and just trundled on down to the gap he could pull into. But, obviously, then that caused the red flag. No. It didn't. Then that caused the safety car.

It didn't cause a red flag at all. Piastri, however, extended his championship because of this to 21 points. So what does this all mean for McLaren? Well, McLaren's pace obviously was sensational. It normally is.

But that collision feels like their first season's real soap opera moment. It was only a matter of time before they started to battle it out properly. Every time they do an interview and they speak to Zac, who is the team principal, I think, off top of my head, of McLaren, he always says, they're just gonna battle it out. So they clearly are doing that exact thing now.

Thing is it's quite a contentious subject in our house because we have at least two massive Lando fans.

And those of you who know me and know Paul, it's Paul that is one of those massive Lando fans. But I'll be honest, I've already got my popcorn ready for the next round.

Groundhog surprise. Okay. Maybe this was the wildest moment.

Lewis Hamilton hit a groundhog on lap 13. Ripping a hole in the floor of his car, who would have thought a groundhog could rip a hole in the floor of your car? Not enough to kick him out the race, but it did start cutting about half a second off each of his laps, so that didn't help him at all.

But Hamilton was devastated, not about the car, not about the fact that he only got P6, but about the groundhog. He was absolutely distraught.

He stated, "so that's devastating. I love animals, and I'm so sad about it. That's horrible. That's never happened to me before. It's never nice to see that."

I just hope it didn't suffer. My only thought was I don't think it would have had time. The speed Lewis was going, there's no way that the animal suffered. No way. Like I said, even with that, he still battled back to P6, but it was hard work.

And in our house, we actually missed it. We actually wondered why they were saying Hamilton had damage as there had been no hit to a wall or anyone else. We were tad confused, but now the groundhog does explain it. And it just proves in F1, you can plan for rain, you can plan for crashed cars. But a groundhog? Who has got the playbook for that?

Kinda reminds me about one of the things that happened last year. I think it was a kimono dragon or something like that that was running along the track, and there's all the stewards trying to chase it off the track. It was just a funny watch. You should so look that up if you haven't seen that. That was really funny.

Midfield highlights. Let's shift the focus to the midfield. Well, I say midfield, but that's definitely not where he ended up. Kimi Antonelli, at only 18, scored his first podium in P3.

Mercedes definitely has something special brewing there, that's for sure. Unfortunately, he's not the youngest to win a podium spot. He's the third youngest, after Max Verstappen in 2016 and Lance Stroll in 2017, who were both 18, but plus seven months rather than Kimi's plus nine months. So he just missed out of being the youngest. So close, Kimi.

And he's been doing so well as well, so well done him.

So behind him, we have Piastri's P4, Charles Leclerc's P5. Hulkenberg had a solid P8 for Salba. And, as you know, I quite like this. Alonso scored points again for the second race in a row with P7, which has just reminded me in the Brundle Trundle when he's going up the pits or going up the starting grid.

Martin spoke to Alonso when they were walking up to go and do the what's it called? The the thing where they sing, the national anthem. That's it. They were walking up to do the national anthem, and Martin actually had a quick chat with him. And as Alonzo was leaving and said goodbye, he had a cheeky squeeze of Martin's cheek. It was so cute, and it was so funny. We were more like, did he just do that? Just shows the cheekiness behind Alonso, I think, and the fact that Martin, everybody loves Martin Brundle.

Apart from that, even Carlos managed to squeeze out a point in tenth after he was knocked out of qualifying in Q1 and ended up seventeenth when he was impeded by Hajar during his fast lap. Hajar got a three place penalty for that.

Not that that was any use to Carlos, who stated after that he was just too upset to talk about it. He was on his fast lap. He was probably going to get into the next qualifying session, but he did not. He was very upset. Poor Carlos.

So this just goes to show the midfield may not grab headlines all the time, but strong performances like these help us fill the grid with extra surprises.

Now championship snapshot. So what does this reshuffle mean in the standings? Piastri still leads with a 198 points. I'm actually just gonna check that for two seconds. Bear with. Bear with. Bear with. Yes. He does have a 198 points.

So Piastri still leads with a 198 points. Norris is just 22 points behind him. And now Russell has taken over P4 from Charles and is about 19 points behind Max Verstappen, who is still clinging on to third place currently. He's about 20 points behind Lando, I think.

Now constructors wise, McLaren's pace is still topping the charts as most of you will know. Despite the chaos from today's race, they're still flipping fast. They hold on to the top spot, but Mercedes is breathing down their neck, thanks to Russell and Antonelli hitting the highs this weekend and both getting podium points.

The championship battle is definitely heating up for both individual driver and constructors. And in constructors, Red Bull are trailing in fourth at the moment, so they have got a lot of work to do to catch up.

Pit stop extras.

So far, I haven't done much of this, but there were a few things over the rest of the weekend that caught my eyes and ears.

Poor Charles LeClerc didn't have a great time of it from practice one when he crashed and missed out on practice two. What was worse, when that happened, he actually had the fastest current time. Bless him.

In practice three after Oscar and Hulkenberg, see, I did it again, mixing up first and second names.

Shall we say, nudged a wall creating a bit of a mess, which caused a red flag while marshalls cleared it up. During this, it was noted that Yuki and Bortolleto both infringed on the red flag rules. Bortolleto being cleared, but Yuki getting a 10 place grid penalty, which wasn't good as this was even before they got to do qualifying.

See, here's the thing. Honestly, what do you lot think?

Is this a second Red Bull car curse? It's been mentioned quite a few times, banded about, that there is a second car curse. I didn't believe it to start with, but as the weeks go on, there just seems to be more and more and more things that go wrong or happen. It's just looking more and more like a thing. What do you guys think?

There were so many people having issues during practice though, Skidding all over the place, missing turns, hitting walls. They showed a clip during it of a few interviews of past racers, and Sebastian Vettel's one was really funny as he described his time on that track as it was a bit "loosey goosey out there, wasn't it?" And I just thought that was just so funny. It really made me chuckle. So I'm just gonna use that if people are all over the place on the track, they are now going to be loosey goosey, thanks to Sebastian Vettel. I just think it's such a funny phrase.

Oh, dear. Oh, and, of course, almost forgot. So lucky I've got notes here so I can read through. In qualifying, Alex Albon's engine cover just flew off.

Literally, one second it was there, and the next it was flying off behind him. Luckily, there wasn't a car right behind him. Obviously, that was a red flag for them to clear it up. A bit scary and not something that should happen really, and, well, I don't think I've ever seen it happen. They're supposed to be that solidly on. So, obviously, air got under there somehow and just ripped it off. It was quite a bizarre thing to see because it looked like he must have crashed, and then he wasn't, he was still in the middle of the track, and, oh, it's just so weird.

Finally, I have a quick shout out to George's spaceman coat that made an appearance again. When he went to go and stand for the national anthem, it was just really funny. I haven't seen it for a little while.

And, of course, the many fans in the crowd with giant faces of the drivers. But I always think the best bit is there's always someone with a car on their head, like on their hat or as a hat. It is a car. It looks like a like a remote control car sat on their head.

It's just crazy. Crazy crazy, but kinda cool.

Virtual safety tee wrap up. Okay. Time for the virtual safety tee.

So I've been asked to each time I do a race is to do a one word vibe of the race. So my one word vibe of the Canadian Grand Prix. Let's see. What could I...unpredictable. It's definitely unpredictable.

There were so many things in that race that I would not have had a clue apart from the fact that I did actually predict the, safety car. Just putting it out there. Just putting it out there. I got that prediction right. But other than that, unpredictable.

Now I do have a favorite moment. Well, there's kind of two favorite moments, but from the same team. The cool, calm, and collected drive of George Russell, as he well and truly owned the weekend. But also in turn, the other best thing I saw was posted on Instagram by team Toto Wolff, which is the team principal of Mercedes. Toto was celebrating when George got pole in Q3.

He had an epic jump and a fist pump followed by a very cool collected stance as if he did it by accident, he shouldn't have done it. Like, he was gonna be told off by a teacher for, like, causing ruckus in the class. It was so funny. Bless him. You have to check it out if you've got Instagram.

Go and have a look at that. It's really funny. Actually, his whole Instagram is pretty good, to be fair. So, yeah, definitely go and have a look at that, people.

Oh, and, actually, there was one other one other of my favorite moments.

There was an interview at one point with Simon Lazenby, the F1 reporter, who's been with the F1 channel since its inception, Nico Rosberg, a former F1 championship winner, and Danica Patrick, who did do epic things in IndyCar and NASCAR racing. The look Nico was giving Danica as she was mansplaining, quite frankly, lecturing them as if she knew best was an absolute picture. It was just so funny. So well done, Nico. Love having you back on the scene.

He's definitely going down the same route of the way Jenson Button, also a former championship winner, seems to feel about her as well. So, yeah, keep an eye on that, folks. That's a funny one to watch.

So your turn. Were you team Russell?

Were you shook by the Groundhog drama or even more by McLaren's crash?

Hit me up on social media. I'm @tracksideteawithrebecca.

So that's it from Montreal. Russell's redemption, McLaren's mayhem, and a Groundhog that reminded us.

This sport could surprise us at any moment.

If you love this rundown, please subscribe, share with friends, and drop your wildcard take on the race to me.

Next stop, Austria, where the track's twisty and the stakes are wild, although it was fairly wild with the Groundhog this time around. We'll see. We'll see.

I'm Rebecca, and this is Trackside Tea. Less telemetry, more tea. Keep it sassy and speedy.