This weekend really shaped up to be quite a spectacular race after what we all witnessed on Saturday; a qualification for the ages. Max won pole in an unbelievable breathtaking event which I believe would have stolen the show on Saturday. But what everyone was talking about was Fernando Alonso getting P2 for his qualifying run on Saturday seeing him starting this high up the grid for the first time since 2012. This was big for the Spaniard at age 41 still bringing it, but would it be enough for Sunday? Carlos Sainz also was on the grid at P3 and was showing flashes of what was to come. Some surprise for me, were notable performances of
the Haas pairing of Kevin Magnussen and Mick Schumacher getting P5 and P6 respectively.
Would the all the stars align and finally give Carlos Sainz a maiden win or would the wall of champions claim a future winner again? All right, so here we go gear-heads onto the race weekend and the winners as well.
The Winners:
Max Verstappen:
Another P1 finish for the Dutch driver and it really never felt in any doubt once he grabbed the position he rarely relinquishes it. As mentioned earlier, the qualifying lap on Saturday that earned him the second successive pole in those conditions was a sign of what was to come. He really shined on the Sunday coming out of the grid when the lights went out and approached that first corner brilliantly. For a large portion of the race he had hardly any challengers from that point and it was smooth sailing once again.
He won on Saturday then he won on Sunday and he’ll take that every day of the week and twice on Sundays. He is really running away with this title and as it stands that’s another 25 points for him and Red Bull racing. If Ferrari have anything about them they will need to put together some performances and have a little bit of luck go their way. Otherwise Max is marching to his second world title.
Carlos Sainz:
Although on the surface looks like a very good performance I felt like it was in the balance for the Spanish native to really get his first win. I just felt like it was an opportunity lost. He was the fastest car on the day with the fastest lap so he was in an excellent position to claim his first victory in Formula 1 but it just was not to be in the end. The strategy was on point and he really gave it to Max and squeezing everything out of F75. It really does show you how unbelievable you are going to have to drive in order to catch Max and yesterday it was not his day. A P2 finish for
the second race in a row is what Carlos had achieved and it’s putting a little bit of pressure on the teammate from Monaco who had a pretty fantastic race himself as well. Ferrari looked to have solved their reliability problem and now they have two top-five finishes for the weekend. Well done sir.
Charles LeClerc:
It wasn’t a good position to be on the grid on Sunday having to take a new power unit after a Saturday in which they were unable to qualify higher than 15th; this was a smart move and Charles showed his class by fighting from P19 all the way up to finishing into P5. That’s 14 positions which is the highest amount a driver has gained through the season. The closest I believe was Alex Albon and he got 11 on just one set of hard tyres throughout. Charles obviously had the pace in the car to absolutely blow away the field in the lower half of the table but it was really hard for him to get through the blockade of Mercedes that Lewis Hamilton and George
Russell occupied on the day. Kudos to Ferrari for being able to keep both of their flagship cars in good position and finishing the race. This is a good signal for them to accumulate points in order to keep up with Red Bull in the constructors championship. I do still think they have a chance to win it, albeit a small one now, if the issues with the Red Bull don’t get solved.
Mercedes Benz:
Old reliable here just continues to make sure that they are in touching distance of the top three positions when never actually getting through P1 or P2 as they are so used to doing back in the day. Lewis Hamilton finishes P3 starting from P4. And then George Russell who had a nightmare at qualifying where the team really went for it and gambled by putting slicks on the British driver’s car. Weather conditions had just dried enough on Saturday but it ended up costing him a position because he spun out as a result of the tyre change. So they were modest positions for this particular Grand Prix. They do really show their class every week although they are far off the championship race, they continually finish within the points. It’s slow and steady that wins the race and are many more races to go. If they are consistent as they have been, they could end up sneaking in at number two if Ferrari continues to have reliability issues.
Lewis Hamilton was immense yesterday, he was overtaking with pace and he was really taking the form he had from Azerbaijan and displaying it onto the track today, it was vintage Hamilton. Although the porpoising issue is still causing problems and you can see it’s really pronounced. The Mercedes keeps bouncing up and down and you can hear it audibly on the broadcast. I am sure it was quite uncomfortable but again he overcame it and got a P3 finish which was the second of the year breaking his longest streak without a podium. George Russell continues with a streak of top five finishes with P4 and that is now nine straight top five finishes which although
now I am a new fan of Formula One seems like a pretty stellar record to have at such a burgeoning career especially on a new team like Mercedes.
It’ll be interesting to see if they can fix this porpoising issue because I believe that they
have the equipment to really challenge Red Bull. It remains to be seen if they can actually keep up with them in terms of pace, Red Bull’s reliability issues the only x-factor where Mercedes do have a car that can finish races where Red Bull at times don’t.
Now onto the losers
The Losers:
Fernando Alonso:
Again we come back to this idea of missed opportunities and Fernando Alonso finishing after what was an incredible qualifying lap on Saturday into P2. The Spaniard was let down again by his car manufacturer with engine issues meaning he simply didn’t have the pace. His performance deserved a better result. I don’t know how much more of this he can handle because it’s getting to the point of utter ridiculousness for him. I imagine he didn’t come out of retirement to join a team that wouldn’t give him the best chance at competing. This is something that they have to fix because they’re wasting what is an incredible driver on such a subpar machine and they should be doing better. Well, thems the breaks.
Sergio Pérez:
Again here we were coming into the weekend expecting so much and this is why the sport is so unpredictable. Sergio Perez was unable to qualify with a small collision on Saturday which meant he started in P15 and to follow that up with a reliability issue forcing him to retire was the icing on a bitter cake. Ultimately if it wasn’t for his teammate, it would have been an absolute black eye on the title challenge from Red Bull with Ferrari doing so well at the weekend when last weekend it was a complete and utter reversal for the team from Italy. It was such a shame that because he was really putting together a string of wonderful finishes with the crowning jewel being Monaco a few weeks earlier. For him I hope it’s just a blip on the radar and he’s
back at in two weeks’ time.
Mick Schumacher:
Clearly when you look at Haas and see another DNF it doesn’t come as a surprise because of their reputation as a minnow team. It has been somewhat hit or miss this year but when they both finished with P5 and P6 had a lot of eyebrows raised as to what this team can do. They are consistently hitting the top or the top half of the grid for a few weeks now. Magnussen has had a couple top 10 finishes but it’s really Mick who has been lacking when another engine failure issue caused him to retire. He had a massive opportunity in his car but it let him down again picking up another DNF. I don’t know how many more of these the famous son of a legend
can sustain before they might ask some tough questions but I picture it’s not been a very fun camp this year with him showing signs of brilliance along with putting inconsistent performances. It must be difficult since there’s so much potential in this driver I would be really interested to see if he does live up to his father’s name as being a true great one day. Only time will tell, but this weekend we are just kept wanting.
Yuki Tsunoda:
This was unlucky for Yuki Tsunoda. He was just not getting what he wanted out of a car this weekend and he was the only one who crashed; clearly costing the team some euros in repairs as well as not finishing the race. So that would be two Red Bull power engines that did not finish out of the four. Yuki has had some up-and-down performances but I think that he has all he’s been pretty good as the second driver at Alpha Tauri. He comes in trying to get some experience through the Red Bull system with the ambitions of one day assuming the position of being a
number two there or maybe even a number one who knows. It was unfortunate but back to the drawing board and they will attack it again in two weeks at Silverstone.
Final Thoughts:
All right gear-heads, I think that this was a weekend with such promise and if you were sort of left wanting I completely agree because what could have been would have been a truly fantastic weekend ultimately it wasn’t to be. It was also interesting to be introduced to a new track for the first time as a newer Formula fan I hadn’t seen the Montreal race track. It had this real cool air of history and it was pretty interesting to learn about the wall of champions, which is a wall where most former champions had crashed foreshadowing their eventual winning of the
championship.
OK guys off to the British Isles in two weeks’ time for the British Grand Prix. Thank you for your time. Please if you happen to enjoy this and the rest of my articles please share and comment.
Next time out, Silverstone!