Mercedes told “don’t intervene” in feisty Kimi Antonelli-George Russell F1 title battle

Sky Sports F1 commentator David Croft has urged Mercedes boss Toto Wolff to trust his drivers as they battle it out for world championship supremacy.

George Russell and Andrea Kimi Antonelli had their first proper on-track battle of 2026 over the Canadian Grand Prix weekend, first clashing on two occasions during the sprint, before resuming their fraught fight in Sunday’s main race in Montreal.

The pair swapped positions for the lead several times during a thrilling scrap before Russell suddenly stopped at the side of the track on lap 30 after suffering what Mercedes described as being a “catastrophic” engine failure.

Despite numerous wheel-banging moments, Croft doesn’t want Mercedes to intervene in the entertaining fight at the very front of the F1 grid.

"Mercedes have already got a fairly handsome lead in the Constructors' Championship," Croft said. "That will only grow I think. Monaco they might not have all their own way, but they're still the class of the field.

"They don't need an intervention yet. Didn't need an intervention with McLaren last year.

"You are paying these drivers handsomely. You should trust them. Every employer should trust their employees to do their job because you've put your faith in them by giving them that job.

"So, stay away for the time being. Don't intervene. Don't change it. Just keep reminding them of what those rules of engagement are and give us fans a real treat.

"I'm not here to give Toto Wolff advice, but if I was, it'd be, 'shh', for the time being. And then when they do take themselves out, if they take themselves out, that's when you can intervene as a team.

"But I don't think anything we've seen at the weekend is going to spill over into the Lewis Hamilton-Nico Rosberg type of rivalry. I think there's a very healthy respect. But we'll see what skulduggery and tricks might get played in the future.”

Three-time W Series champion Jamie Chadwick cautioned that the Mercedes battle almost “ended in tears”.

"They were a few laps away from that ending in tears, so I don't know if George's engine failure came at a good time for Mercedes in terms of intra-team politics,” she said.

"In terms of the battle we saw on track on Sunday, I think we were almost expecting that given what we saw in the Sprint. It just seems like with the new regulations, the way that they can follow closely and can't really get away from each other, means they're constantly fighting each other. I have not seen racing like that for the lead of the race in a long time.”

Chadwick added: "I think the hot-headedness of Kimi is what's giving him that tenth of a second, especially when he was behind George and chasing him.

"You could see he had the bit between his teeth. He had that extra hunger, extra motivation to try and get on par with his team-mate. And I think that tenth of a second, or that hunger has come from the fact that he came off the back of winning three races and his confidence has just grown.

"He keeps saying he's not thinking about the championship, but he now has a big advantage. He's thinking of it as, 'I don't care I've got an experienced team-mate, I have every right to be ahead of you today'. And that's how he's driving."