FIA review & new racing guidelines - Inside Mercedes team debrief at Canadian GP

Mercedes

FIA review & new racing guidelines - Inside Mercedes team debrief at Canadian GP

Toto Wolff revealed what might have happened had the battle have been with another team

Sam Cook Digital Journalist

Sports Journalist who has been covering motorsport since 2023

Wednesday 27 May 2026 15:57

Mercedes F1 boss Toto Wolff has revealed the ground rules set out by his team for his drivers at the Canadian Grand Prix.

George Russell and Kimi Antonelli, seemingly in a drivers' championship battle against one another, fought hard for position during both the sprint race and grand prix in Canada.

While Russell came out on top in the sprint race, their battle was ended early in the main grand prix, with Russell having to retire from the lead of the race with a power unit issue on lap 30.

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It meant that Antonelli could go on and claim a fourth consecutive grand prix win in dominant fashion, and extend his lead over Russell in the standings to 43 points.

But there was much debate about whether their on-track scraps throughout the weekend crossed the line, with the pair coming close to contact on a number of occasions.

Antonelli felt like he had been pushed off the track by Russell during the sprint race and called on the team to ask the FIA to investigate, to which he got a stern response from his boss Wolff telling him to stop 'moaning'.

Wolff has now revealed that after that race, new guidelines were put in place by the team about how they go racing.

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Do Mercedes have team orders?

“Yeah, I mean, that was good, like sport should be, an intra-team battle or outside,” Wolff told Martin Brundle on Sky Sports. “And for us, it's good learning.

“We obviously went through these motions with Nico and Lewis, and a sprint race is always a possibility to then recalibrate or recondition.

“It was very easy because we sat them down and said: 'how do we want to race? Are you racing the other car like any third car, which I'm fine with? And then obviously you don't leave the space here. Or do you want to leave the space, which I would not expect, because fundamentally you're racing for winning and winning a championship? Or, are we playing this super smooth sailing and you only overtake with a shot on the straight or on the brake?'

“We agreed that we trust them. They know each other, they know how to push, but in any case, no one of either two is expecting the other one to leave space because it's too important.”

In the main race, there was then an incident in which Antonelli tried to get past Russell and was forced to go off track, before being told by his team to give the position back. That caused Antonelli to launch into another team radio rant, with the incident not having been officially under investigation by FIA race stewards.

Wolff was asked by Brundle whether it would have been different if the incident was with a different team, to which he replied: “Well, we would have called and said: 'Have a look at the situation.' Yeah, definitely.”

F1 Mercedes FIA George Russell Kimi Antonelli Canadian Grand Prix