Lando Norris’s crash in Jeddah aside, qualifying for the Canadian Grand Prix looks like being his biggest blow on a Saturday so far this year.
The McLaren driver went into qualifying having topped the final practice session. Team mate Oscar Piastri, meanwhile, looked less than comfortable, and was fortunate to emerge largely unscathed after clipping the infamous ‘Wall of Champions’.But come qualifying, Piastri asserted himself in the intra-team battle once again. Norris found himself so far behind he goes into Sunday’s race badly compromised and in serious danger of losing more vital ground in the championship.
Change from practice to qualifying
Red Bull made their usual significant lap time gains from Friday to Saturday. As on several previous occasions this year it was enough to swing them ahead of McLaren by a few hundredths of a second.
But this time Mercedes had the beating of the lot of them, George Russell emerging on top in qualifying.
Others found the going tougher on Saturday. They included Williams, who looked in great shape on Friday. Alexander Albon scraped into Q3, but admitted their car was not handling as well after the wing direction changed.
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Gaps between team mates
Russell was almost giddy with excitement over his pole position lap, which was an impressively clean and committed effort. It put him the best part of half a second clear of team mate Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who nonetheless scored an impressive fourth on the grid in his first appearance at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.
But the lap time gap was even greater between another pair of team mates. Remarkably, it wasn’t at Aston Martin, where Lance Stroll suffered his 22nd straight defeat to Fernando Alonso, nor Red Bull, where Yuki Tsunoda missed Q3 for the fourth weekend running.
It was at McLaren, where Norris opted to use the team’s new suspension and Piastri kept the old configuration. Norris slipped up twice in Q3 and as a result he set his quickest time on his second run on a set of soft tyres.
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Team mate battles sequences
Out-qualified team mate
| Rank | Driver | Streak |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fernando Alonso | 22 |
| 2 | Max Verstappen | 16 |
| 3 | Isack Hadjar | 5 |
| 4 | George Russell | 4 |
| 5 | Alexander Albon | 3 |
| 6 | Oliver Bearman | 2 |
| = | Lewis Hamilton | 2 |
| = | Oscar Piastri | 2 |
| 9 | Franco Colapinto | 1 |
| = | Nico Hulkenberg | 1 |
Out-qualified by team mate
| Rank | Driver | Streak |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lance Stroll | 22 |
| 2 | Yuki Tsunoda | 8 |
| 3 | Liam Lawson | 5 |
| 4 | Andrea Kimi Antonelli | 4 |
| 5 | Carlos Sainz Jnr | 3 |
| 6 | Esteban Ocon | 2 |
| = | Charles Leclerc | 2 |
| = | Lando Norris | 2 |
| 9 | Gabriel Bortoleto | 1 |
| = | Pierre Gasly | 1 |
Q1 and Q3
Eliminated in Q1
| Rank | Driver | Streak |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Carlos Sainz Jnr | 2 |
| 2 | Gabriel Bortoleto | 1 |
| = | Pierre Gasly | 1 |
| = | Lance Stroll | 1 |
| = | Liam Lawson | 1 |
Reached Q3
| Rank | Driver | Streak |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lando Norris | 17 |
| 2 | Oscar Piastri | 14 |
| 3 | Max Verstappen | 13 |
| 4 | Isack Hadjar | 4 |
| = | Fernando Alonso | 4 |
| 6 | Lewis Hamilton | 3 |
| = | Charles Leclerc | 3 |
| 8 | George Russell | 2 |
| = | Andrea Kimi Antonelli | 2 |
| 10 | Alexander Albon | 1 |
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2025 Canadian Grand Prix
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- Verstappen refuses to say whether he supported Red Bull’s latest Russell protests
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- The driver and car explanations for how Piastri turned the tables on Norris
David BR (@david-br)
15th June 2025, 18:43
Calling Alonso versus Stroll a ‘battle’ seems to be stretching the English language to breaking point :)
This was the season when Norris was supposed to shine, finally, as a F1 champion in waiting. Instead Piastri has improved his pace impressively, while Norris is content to spend his free time telling us how correct a driver Verstappen is. Does he know he’s competing for the title? This is it. Maybe the one chance he has to win the championship before new regulations shuffle all the teams up again. Has anybody told him?