If you printed out the pre-race predictions for the Canadian Grand Prix and brought them to Montreal, you'd have wanted to burn them by the checkered flag. Circuit Gilles Villeneuve delivered one of the most volatile races of the 2026 season: a pre-race shower that scrambled tyre strategies, a leader who retired while out front, a driver who quit his car mid-race due to physical pain, and a teenager who calmly collected his fourth win in a row while the chaos unfolded around him. Almost nobody finished where the predictions said they would—and the reasons why are the real story of this race.

Mercedes

Mercedes produced the single biggest swing of the day, just not in the way anyone expected. George Russell, not Kimi Antonelli, was the favourite to be the team's top scorer, and for long stretches he was doing exactly that—leading and looking comfortable while his rookie teammate applied the pressure from behind. Then, around lap 30, Russell's engine suffered an electrical failure while he was still out front, instantly handing the lead and the win to Antonelli. It was Antonelli's fourth consecutive victory, a run that now extends his championship lead to 43 points, but it's a title that came via reliability roulette rather than a straightforward beatdown. Russell's early retirement from a predicted seventh-place finish that briefly looked like a podium contention—that's the gap that defines this race.

Ferrari

Ferrari's weekend split cleanly down the middle of the garage. Charles Leclerc was pegged as the favourite to win, but instead endured what he called his "worst weekend" in Formula 1, complaining of "zero feeling" in the car from Friday practice onward and spending the final 15 laps losing more than a second per lap just trying to keep the car on the road. His eventual fourth-place finish was, in his own words, "more out of luck than reward"—a serious comedown from a predicted victory. Lewis Hamilton told the opposite story: written off for just a single point, he produced his best result since joining Ferrari, hunting down Verstappen and passing him on the outside of Turn 1 on lap 62 to snatch second place. One garage, two completely different afternoons.

Racing Bulls

Liam Lawson was pencilled in as a genuine podium threat, but a hydraulic issue that limited his Friday running and knocked him out of Sprint Qualifying blunted that potential; he still matched his season-best with seventh place, a solid recovery given the circumstances. His teammate Arvid Lindblad had a much rougher outcome relative to expectations—after scoring a point in the Sprint and qualifying ninth, a clutch problem on the formation lap meant he never even started the Grand Prix, turning a predicted points finish into a non-start.

Haas

Haas arrived in Montreal with fresh sidepods and floor aimed at extra downforce and stability, and results suggest there's real work still to convert that into predicted-level pace. Oliver Bearman, tipped for a career-best third place, started 16th on soft tyres and clawed his way into the top 10 as intermediate-tyre starters pitted, eventually chasing down a Williams for tenth—his fourth points finish in five races, but well shy of the podium the prediction implied. Esteban Ocon, expected around ninth, slipped to 14th after a lap-17 stop for mediums followed by another under a virtual safety car for softs—strategy that simply didn't unlock enough pace on a day when track conditions kept shifting.

McLaren

McLaren's predicted 1-2 punch through the points evaporated almost entirely, and the explanation is a mix of bad luck and a bad tyre call. Both cars started on intermediates in anticipation of rain that stopped before the race properly got going, immediately putting McLaren on the back foot. Lando Norris, predicted fourth, was forced into an unscheduled pit stop on lap 15 as his gearbox and radiators overheated, and he eventually retired near half-distance—a result he admitted "put us out of our misery." Oscar Piastri actually matched his predicted 11th place, but only after colliding with Alex Albon's Williams during an overtake attempt, a clash that ended Albon's race, earned Piastri a 10-second penalty, and left him two laps down at the flag.

Red Bull

Isack Hadjar delivered exactly as advertised, converting a seventh-place start into a season-best fifth despite carrying a double penalty through the race. The real headline, though, belongs to Max Verstappen, who was written off as a non-scorer at 14th but instead ran second for long stretches before Hamilton's late pass demoted him to third—an 11-place jump on his predicted finish and the largest single upward swing of the entire race. Verstappen called it a "great result" but insisted the team can "do better," a reminder that even a shock podium wasn't the ceiling he had in mind.

Alpine

Alpine quietly authored one of the day's feel-good stories. Both Pierre Gasly (predicted 12th, finished eighth) and Franco Colapinto (predicted 13th, finished sixth) comfortably beat their forecasts in a double-points haul the team called "fantastic." Colapinto backed up his career-best Miami seventh with an even better career-best sixth in Montreal, with both cars following an identical script—a lap-30 stop from mediums to hards that clearly worked with how the race unfolded.

Williams

Williams split its result down driver-specific lines. Carlos Sainz, predicted 17th, gambled on starting from 15th on intermediates—a call he later admitted was a "mistake"—but recovered brilliantly to ninth, his third points finish in four races. Alex Albon wasn't so fortunate: predicted around 15th, he instead retired early after being hit by Piastri at the hairpin, the contact leaving heavy damage to his FW48 and ending a race that had nothing to do with strategy or pace.

Audi

Audi's Nico Hulkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto both beat their predicted slots (16th and 18th becoming 12th and 13th), but the underlying story is one of a gamble that didn't quite pay off. Both drivers started on intermediates—Hulkenberg called it "a risk worth taking"—yet the strategy still wasn't enough to crack the points, leaving Audi to reflect on another near-miss despite the on-paper improvement over forecast.

Aston Martin

Aston Martin's day was defined by one driver's misfortune rather than raw pace. Fernando Alonso, predicted to finish near the back at 19th, instead retired voluntarily on lap 24 because of a recurring seat-position issue causing him physical pain—a problem team officials confirmed had already affected him in Saturday's sprint, and one that reflects a broader season of reliability and setup struggles for the team. Lance Stroll finished 15th, four laps down and unable to get his tyres into the working window, a modest improvement on his predicted 20th but hardly a result to build momentum from.

Cadillac

Cadillac's rookie campaign continued to be a story of scraps and setbacks. Valtteri Bottas beat his predicted 21st by finishing 16th, four laps down after four pit stops, while Sergio Perez's predicted 22nd became a non-start when a suspension failure ended his race outright. Neither result changes the bigger picture: Cadillac remains outside the points fight as it works through its first season.

Final Takeaways

The Canadian Grand Prix will be remembered as the day the prediction system met Montreal's unpredictability head-on. The headline swing was at Mercedes, where Russell's late electrical failure while leading gifted Antonelli a fourth straight win and pushed his championship advantage out to 43 points—turning a predicted midfield result for Mercedes into a statement of dominance by the sport's form driver. Just as telling was the split inside Ferrari, where Hamilton's finest afternoon in red coincided with Leclerc's most miserable, a reminder that expectations built around a driver's reputation can be undone by a car that doesn't feel right. Add in Verstappen's stunning climb from a written-off 14th to the podium, McLaren's tyre gamble turned double disappointment, and Alonso's painful mid-race retirement, and Montreal offered a clear lesson: on a weekend with unstable weather and a track that punishes the smallest misstep, reliability and racecraft mattered more than raw pace—and nobody's spreadsheet saw that coming.