(Motorsport-Total.com) – Dear readers,
it’s been a while since I wrote my last column. In September 2025, Oscar Piastri was taken out, before my spine started making sitting in the office a hell. So now I’m back – and I have a bit of the feeling as if I woke up in a time machine.
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One might think it’s 2014/15/16 again. The “new Formula 1” is one with more electric, about which purists like me are currently the loudest to complain. Mercedes mastered the new regulations best and built the strongest power unit. Honda really messed up. And the toughest duels are fought between the two Mercedes drivers themselves. Only now they are no longer called Hamilton and Rosberg, but Russell and Antonelli.
Toto Wolff must feel a bit like in the second part of “Back to the Future.” Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg entered the 2014 season as best friends. And came out of the 2015 season as bitter rivals. Is the same movie playing again at Mercedes, only with a changed cast in the roles of Marty and Biff? Many signs from Canada suggest that George Russell and Kimi Antonelli have only given their team boss the first of many sleepless nights.
How will Wolff let the duel run now?
On Sunday evening in Montreal, just before he boarded a private jet with Russell, Wolff muttered something about having a problem when his drivers freak out on the radio and thus draw the attention of the race stewards. “Apart from that, they behaved like racers fighting for a world championship. I can’t see anything wrong with that.”
For almost 30 laps, Canada 2026 surprisingly reminded of Hamilton’s and Rosberg’s epic duel in Bahrain 2014, in which it also got close several times but never crashed in the end. Wolff let the duel run, and he did so this time as well. Even though he grinned in an interview with ServusTV: “I don’t know … If I have to watch more races like this, maybe I’d rather shift down a gear.”
The memories of 2014/15/16 are probably still too present. Back then, everything also started with hard duels that were sportingly fair and thrilled millions of fans. In the end, however, the Mercedes management devised strict guidelines for internal team conduct in duels and introduced the rule that drivers must pay for bodywork damage they cause themselves.
Bahrain 2014: The beginning of the team war
What started harmlessly in Bahrain 2014 ended in several mini-disasters. In Belgium 2014, Rosberg slashed a tire of Hamilton with the front wing. In Spain 2016, the two knocked each other out (and a certain Max Verstappen took advantage of the opportunity and won his first Grand Prix). A few weeks later, in Canada, Rosberg fell back due to a touch at the start. And in Austria, they crashed into each other again.
Hamilton vs. Rosberg: The crash chronology
Toto Wolff has never made a secret of the fact that he would prefer not to experience such an explosive situation within his own team again. When it came to finding a successor for Rosberg at the end of 2016, he preferred to get the obedient Bottas rather than the rebellious Wehrlein, with whom the whole story might have started over again.
But now he is right back in the same movie as back then, with two drivers who act like buddies outwardly but between whom sooner or later sparks will almost certainly fly. For a very simple reason: because both are exceptionally good.
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What is different now compared to ten years ago
There are also differences compared to ten years ago. First: Mercedes does not have the luxury of being able to turn the power unit up and down almost at will and thus manage the lead over the rest of the world. When Russell and Antonelli fight each other and think more about themselves than the interests of the team, as in the F1 sprint on Saturday, the first pursuers are not far away and lie in wait to hope for leftovers.
Second: This time it is not the more established of the two drivers who can ultimately drive a fraction faster, but the newcomer. Whenever Antonelli was behind Russell in Montreal, the latter had to sweat a lot. Whenever Antonelli got past, the air seemed to be out of the duel.
It is possibly like back then, with Russell in the Rosberg and Antonelli in the Hamilton role: two outstanding racers, one of whom is equipped with marginally more sheer natural talent. Which is not to say that Russell can no longer become world champion now. Rosberg managed it back then, winning at least one of three possible titles with enormous effort.
In which drawer does the “Racing Intent” actually lie?
Toto Wolff now has to consider whether there are lessons from ten years ago that could spare Mercedes a similar fiasco as back then at the start in Barcelona. He might want to dig out the old guidelines document again, which has gotten a bit dusty over the years. And in the end, he will certainly let as much run as possible. Because he is smart enough to understand that such an epic man-to-man duel is much more the stuff of legends than a world championship fight manipulated from the command post. Nobody can really use that in a Formula 1 that is already under strict observation by long-standing purists like me.
How will it all end? I don’t know either. But let’s put it this way: betting now that Russell and Antonelli will crash sooner or later seems to me a bold affair.
Only: Even if there is now a 43-point gap between Antonelli and Russell, and even if Antonelli is perhaps the slightly faster Mercedes driver overall – anyone who already declares the world championship over has still not understood the dynamics of Formula 1 after all these years. When I had to give in to my spine in 2025, Oscar Piastri supposedly had a hand on the world championship trophy. In the end, Lando Norris was world champion.
That was in September. Now it’s only May. So still plenty of time for crazy twists in Formula 1 2026. And for a few more sleepless nights for Toto Wolff.
Yours
Christian Nimmervoll
Note: It is in the nature of things that this column reflects my subjective perception. Anyone who disagrees is welcome to discuss it with me, namely on my Facebook page “Formula 1 inside with Christian Nimmervoll.” There you won’t primarily find “breaking news” from the Grand Prix circus, but above all strictly subjective and sometimes quite biting assessments of the most important developments behind the scenes of Formula 1.
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