"The gods don't want me to be in this fight," claims George Russell as Montreal DNF leaves him 43 points adrift of his teammate.

Heading into the Canada weekend it was clear that Russell had to reassert himself. True, the points gap to his teammate was just 20 points, but coming off the back of three successive poles (his first) and three successive wins (his first), Kimi Antonelli was clearly on a roll.

From the opening practice session it was clear that the Italian teenager was seeking to build on his form, however Russell had clearly raised his game.

The sprint saw a no holds-barred battle between the pair, which, despite the best efforts of Toto Wolff, showed that the gloves were finally coming off, and this continued through qualifying and into the race.

Antonelli put his teammate under continued, intense pressure, yet somehow Russell soaked it up. However, on Lap 29 the Briton pulled off track with a power unit issue.

Throwing his headrest out of the car - a move which saw him fined €5,000, suspended for 12 months - Russell could only watch on as his teammate cruised to victory, extending his championship lead to 43 points.

"Right now it's his to lose," he subsequently said of the title fight. "It's so many points ahead," he added.

"It feels like the gods don't want me to be in this fight," he sighed, "when I look at the safety car timing in Japan, breaking down in China Q3 fighting for pole, breaking down from the lead here today...

"But the pressure's off," he insisted. "I'll go out, enjoy every single race, try and win every single race, I've got nothing to lose, so I don't want to be stood here talking like that. It is, of course, frustrating and I want to be in that fight. Hopefully, the luck turns."

Asked about the moment he knew there was an issue, he said: "Everything turned off all of a sudden as I went into the corner. The engine stopped, no electronics, no proper braking.

"I'm proud of my weekend," he added, "pole for the sprint, won the sprint, pole in qualifying. I was leading when I stopped. I had a good battle with Kimi.

"Hard battles," he continued, "I really loved the battle and I wanted to continue for thirty more laps. I would have loved to see how it would have panned out but here we are."

"You're extremely happy for one driver and his driving, and then you feel gutted for the other ones, so it's difficult," admitted Toto Wolff when asked about the race. "Kimi has done a splendid job today, and deserved to win. But George, shame, he was in the lead of the race.

"We half enjoyed watching them, how they fought it out," he continued. "I wish we would have had a one and a two.

"As long as we maintained that gap, it was okay watching it," he said of their battle. "But it obviously can go wrong. Not even because one wants to hit the other one, but simply with Kimi locking up the wheels and you can take two cars out."

Despite how it appeared, the Austrian insists that he never felt the need to make the call telling them to ease off.

"They were giving each other room, which is great," he said. "We never changed the engine strategies. So the one defending had the tools he needed. The one attacking had the tools he needed. It made no difference between the two.

"Obviously it was a luxury problem. I would hope we go like this for much longer in the season. But you can't discount the others. And if it was closer behind us, if we were a threat to lose the position, we would definitely jump in and say, let's not lose so much time with each other."

As for Russell's comment about the title, Wolff said: "I mean, yeah, it's a 40-point, or 43-point gap. But there is, how many, 17 more races to go?" There's so many points to score that this is going to go all the way to the end."

Check out our Sunday gallery from Montreal here.