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Boy, has this season been eventful so far! Going into the closing weeks of the 2025 season, a 3-way battle between McLaren’s upcoming champ Oscar Piastri, Red Bull’s dominant Max Verstappen, and McLaren’s golden boy and eventual world champ, Lando Norris had ensued. Norris would break a 4 year consecutive run of championships from Verstappen and his variety of dominant RB’s that included many records being broken at the time. Despite it seeming like a story to be continued for the upcoming season as McLaren and Red Bull battled it out, a quiet 3rd contender entered the fray in Mercedes-AMG (referred to from now as Mercedes, for word count purposes).

Lewis Hamilton’s former team had a young up-and-comer in George Russell paired up with him before Hamilton left for Ferrari in 2025. Russell surprisingly never was too far behind the 7-time world champ whenever they had their outings and many believed Mercedes had their new world champion already in Russell when the time would come. Throughout that same season Hamilton was no longer with the team, a call was made to a young 18-year-old, who unknowingly would put a pin in Russell’s plans.

Kimi Antonelli quickly rose through the ranks competing in F4 at the age of 15, and skipping F3 going straight to F2 at the age of 17, winning multiple Grand Prix’s and finishing 6th in their respective world championship. Antonelli was driving for Perma in F2, but was under the keen eye of Mercedes’ team principal, Toto Wolff. Commenting about Antonelli himself when driving for Perma in F2, Wolff stated, “A champion needs to be thrown in the cold water”, a truer testament couldn’t come in 2026.

With the new regulations in place, and the controversial 50/50 power disparity of engine and battery for the new powertrain, which will be touched upon in this week’s AP Podcast, Mercedes has seemingly been one step ahead of all the other teams on the grid. George Russell won the opener in Australia, meanwhile Kimi Antonelli won the 2nd race on the calendar in China, with the Shanghai GP. Russell would surely take over the rest of the rest of the season right? riiight?

Well, Antontelli would win the Japanese GP in Suzuka, becoming the youngest F1 driver in history to lead the driver’s championship, then win again in Miami even if Lando would win the Sprint Race, and now most recently in Canada, winning the Canadian GP in Montreal. As it stands with a tragic DNF from Russell in Canada, Antonelli stands tall with 131 points, meanwhile George Russell sits 2nd with 88 points. Not only is Antonelli running away with the driver’s championship at the moment, but is also proving a point, even the rookies can do great things. Becoming the first F1 driver ever to win their first four wins back-to-back, Mercedes seems to have something special in Antonelli and rightfully so.

Although, you do have to feel bad for George Russell, as I did leave a pretty big detail out from this season, the in-team fighting has already began. Throughout the Canadian GP, Russell would end up getting pole, and Antonelli would end up right on his tail, with Russell defending very aggressively, almost colliding with the two but refusing to give up the position at all. Antonelli upset several times on the radio, meanwhile Mercedes engineers responded by essentially letting them race. The story was no different on the day of the GP, with 30 laps of in-fighting between the two silver arrow prodigies taking it at each other.

That fight would end abruptly however, when Russell around the chicane at turns 8-9 would have a catastrophic failure, halting his car dead in its tracks, ending his weekend very early. To not make this much longer than it has to be, before the actual AP Podcast episode, George Russell would be interviewed by F1 media asking him about how he felt about his DNF, and the battle with Kimi Antonelli stating, “Feels like somebody doesn’t want me to fight, or compete for this championship”, Russell goes on to say about Antonelli, “I love the battle, I was happy with how I handled it….I wanted to continue for 30 more laps, and see how it panned out, but here we are.” Russell does sound pretty defeated and frustrated over what may have transpired with his Mercedes, but more about not being able to compete against Antonelli to see who is the true better Mercedes driver in F1.

Whether that may come from a place of frustration or simply just a competitive spirit, we will touch more on it on the AP Podcast and talk about the upcoming European leg of the 2026 F1 season, and what to expect from it.