Brundle on Canada: Peerless Verstappen, Ricciardo criticism & 2026 rules

That was a wild Canadian Grand Prix, three different race leaders dodging pop-up showers and stormy rain, quickly followed by bright sunshine, whilst navigating their way between the walls and slippery track furniture, and cars pointing in the wrong direction from time to time.The top seven on the grid were covered by just over quarter of a second, and six of those drivers felt they should have been on pole position, including Fernando Alonso in sixth and a confused Lewis Hamilton in seventh. All felt that an error-free lap would have done the job.In the end, George Russell delivered a lap on used tyres which was fast enough, and early enough, to put him ahead of Max Verstappen on the front row with an identical time to three decimal places. It would be terribly F1 for us to move to four or even five decimal places forthwith. Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri bossed the second row for McLaren, followed by Daniel Ricciardo in fifth who was happy with that fine effort and not claiming he should have done better.For the record, as it's become a hot topic due to my Sky Sports F1 colleague Jacques Villeneuve expressing his firm opinions, I have fundamental respect for all F1 drivers, not least for Daniel and Jacques, because I know how hard it is to drive such fearsome cars under that spotlight. Trending Daniel has won eight GPs including an outstanding Monaco victory, scored 32 podiums, and has regularly shown world-class talent. But those results were quite a while ago and I wish he'd not left Red Bull at the end of 2018. That was an emotional and flawed decision, he should have faced up to Max in the best car, then he'd have necessarily raised his game even further. Ricciardo never seemed to be quite the same driver again. He clearly still does have speed and race craft, as we witnessed also in the Miami Sprint, but something in his psyche or approach is holding that back and it's costing him opportunity and longevity.McLaren and Mercedes quicker than Red BullWe can always rely on sporadic rain to spice up a Grand Prix and this was no exception. The early laps were all about watching the Haas drivers Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg on 'extreme wet' tyres charging through the rest of the pack otherwise using the 'intermediate' tyre. Haas rolled the dice, and why not, as Kevin made it as far as fourth place. But the top teams had put faith in what turned out to be very accurate weather forecasts and the track came to their tyres just in time. Russell led from Verstappen, with McLaren holding station, and before long they were all searching for wet parts of the track to cool the tyres. A couple of solid overtakes meant that Lando Norris was now leading and pulling away. One takeaway from the race is that, on intermediate tyres, McLaren were the fastest car would have won on sheer pace.A safety car on lap 24 due to Logan Sargeant putting his Williams in the wall hurt McLaren. They must have known a safety car was imminent, but because Lando was a chunk ahead he was quite close to the pit entry, although could have made it in. They elected to go around and sadly he was scooped by the safety car, doing its job correctly, and this cost valuable time and track position. And possibly victory.More rain meant that fresh intermediate tyres were required for a while and the lone Red Bull of Verstappen continued to slug it out with the two McLarens and effectively both Mercedes. There was some aggressive defending and overtaking going on, and, whilst not an all-time classic, this was a gruelling and memorable race. The second takeaway is that once onto dry tyres, Mercedes were the fastest car and could have won on sheer pace. A critical error in Turn 8 while pushing hard cost Russell track position and the chance to attack Verstappen, who was getting along just about fine whilst managing suspension issues particularly in relation to riding kerbs.There was a point where Hamilton was absolutely flying and recovering nicely having been tucked up behind Alonso in the first phase of the race. Lewis later described it as one of his worst drives, which wasn't apparent to me but maybe he was making a lot of small errors here and there. The youngsters in front of him remain youthfully fast and fearless, but have a lot of experience too, and he'll always need his 'A game' to match or beat them now.Verstappen stars as Perez, Ferraris endure horror-showsDespite all the challenges with weather, rivals, and safety cars, peerlessly emerging through it all for his 60th F1 victory was Verstappen. Behind him was a long story of 'Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda', to quote the fabulous Beverley Knight, but the reigning world champion simply did.That made newly resigned Sergio Perez's dismal weekend in the other Red Bull even worse. He qualified badly, had a front wing damaging skirmish in turn 2, didn't progress much, then span off into retirement. Ouch. Ferrari didn't have much more satisfaction, if any. Still revelling in the