Vibration problems and drivability complaints have been consistent themes, and the team has found little of the pace that looked within reach when Fernando Alonso was threading the AMR23 through the points in another era.
The ADUO framework was, in large part, written with situations like this in mind.
A manufacturer whose ICE falls more than 10 per cent below the benchmark qualifies for up to $11 million of additional development budget outside the cost cap – and, in 2026 only, the option to bring forward a further $8m from future periods.
That is serious money. Serious enough to accelerate a recovery that might otherwise wait until 2027.
Red Bull Ford, Ferrari, and Audi are also understood to be in the conversation, though at what deficit and in what tier remains the FIA’s secret.
Ferrari has already been linked to a revised engine architecture potentially as early as Spa, suggesting the team’s internal assessment of where it sits is already influencing the development calendar, ADUO verdict or not.
What makes Montreal interesting as a data point is the circuit itself.
The long straights down to the hairpin and back to the final chicane place a premium on outright power and ERS deployment in a way that medium-downforce street circuits rarely do.
It is one of the cleaner reads the FIA will get on raw ICE performance, uncontaminated by the aerodynamic differentials that can skew results at circuits with more corners.
For Honda and anyone else watching the numbers anxiously, Montreal is both a final test and an unyielding submission.
Once the chequered flag falls at the Gilles Villeneuve circuit, the theoretical debate ends. The FIA’s telemetry will strip away the track-specific excuses, the aerodynamic camouflage, and the winter optimism.
In two weeks’ time, the numbers will lay bare exactly who is leading the new era. and who is being handed an $11 million lifeline just to survive it.
Who’s under pressure: George Russell
Russell has been outperformed by Antonelli in the last three races
Grand Prix Photo
Few could have predicted that George Russell would arrive in the fifth (originally seventh) round of the 2026 season needing to prove a point, let alone against his own team-mate.
Kimi Antonelli has claimed the last three race victories and the last three pole positions, and holds a 20-point lead in the championship over his much more experienced Mercedes team-mate.
That sequence has developed its own momentum, and momentum in Formula 1 is rarely just psychological – it is engineers optimising around a driver’s preferences, a pit wall building confidence in a set of instincts, a team cohering around a number one, whether anyone has used that phrase or not.
Russell won Australia and he took the sprint in China, but since then, the season has belonged to his team-mate, and those victories feel like they happened a long time ago.
Montreal, of all circuits, should suit Russell, and he has to use that to stop Antonelli’s momentum.
The characteristics that made Russell fast in Montreal before are not things that disappear, and his victory last year surely makes him favourite going into the weekend.
However, a circuit that once felt like his personal property now comes with a question attached: has Russell gone from title favourite to becoming Antonelli’s secondary act?
If Antonelli, in only his second Canadian Grand Prix, outshines Russell at a track like Montreal, that question will become harder to dismiss, regardless of how hard Toto Wolff tries to downplay the Italian’s chances in the title race.
Mercedes is bringing its first major upgrade package to Canada, which should, in theory, help both cars.
The complication is that new machinery can take a session or two to properly understand, and in a sprint weekend, there is precious little time for that understanding to develop. Russell has the experience to adapt quickly. Whether experience is enough, right now, is the question the season keeps asking.
Historical highlight: The race no one would win
Revson was eventually declared the winner
Grand Prix Photo
Every Formula 1 race produces a winner. The 1973 Canadian Grand Prix, if you were there on the day, produced two – and nobody was entirely sure which was real.
The trouble started before a wheel was turned in anger.
A month earlier, a single test of what the Commission Sportive Internationale had dubbed the ‘pace car control system’ had taken place at the Österreichring.
That was the sum total of preparation for what was about to be deployed at Mosport Park in the rain.
Onto the track rolled a lemon-yellow Porsche 914, driven by Canadian driver and occasional grand prix racer Egbert ‘Eppie’ Wietzes, and the age of the Formula 1 safety car was born.
The race itself had already offered enough drama without the intervention.
Firestone wet weather tyres and a smooth V12 BRM engine helped Niki Lauda build a lead of nearly half a minute by lap 20. He was driving a BRM, a team already in decline, and he was making the field look pedestrian. When his wet tyres burned through, he handed the lead to Emerson Fittipaldi, and then Jody Scheckter and Francois Cevert came together and blocked the road.
That is when Wietzes was dispatched.
The safety car picked up the wrong driver – allowing some cars, including eventual race winner Peter Revson, to gain a lap on the rest of the field.
The pitstops caused significant confusion, with some believing the leader to be Howden Ganley and others, including Team Lotus manager Colin Chapman, believing it to be Fittipaldi.
Chapman even went as far as to perform his traditional victory celebration of tossing his cap in the air at the end of what he believed to be the 80th lap, even though Fittipaldi was not shown the chequered flag.
After a long pause, the starter waved the flag over a group of cars consisting of Ganley, Mike Hailwood, Revson and James Hunt.
What followed was four hours of wrangling as the official timekeepers and the teams compared their lap charts.
The final result was that Revson was declared the winner with Fittipaldi second. Jackie Oliver came home third, Beltoise fourth, Stewart fifth and Ganley – whose lap chart, kept by his own girlfriend, unsurprisingly had him winning – in sixth.
Pirelli form guide: Canadian GP
