A weekend of starring roles or struggles up and down the grid
Monday 20 June 2016 13:31, UK
It was always going to take something special to beat Lewis Hamilton on one of his favourite hunting grounds and, with no rival driver or team coming up with the necessary weekend-long answers, a fifth Montreal win was Sunday's most likely outcome.
That's not to say Lewis didn't give them any chances. The world champion was imperious on Friday, although that didn't stop qualifying proving a closer run affair than perhaps he himself envisaged. Difficult getaways from pole are proving an occupational hazard for the Briton in 2016 but from the moment Nico Rosberg came off worse in the turn one clash Hamilton later brushed off as an "unfortunate tap", there was only one Mercedes driver who was going to deny the hard-charging Sebastian Vettel.
After a seven-month wait for F1 win 44, number 45 has taken just two more weeks to arrive for Hamilton. No wonder he has been reinstalled as the world championship favourite.
Rating out of ten: 9
Sebastian Vettel could have won the Canadian GP and probably should have done. While the Ferrari driver preferred to attribute his defeat to the performance of his rival - "Lewis was a bit too quick, that was the issue," he said on the podium - it was his team's decision to pit as early as lap 11 that ultimately did for Sebastian.
"We overestimated the degradation of the tyres," team boss Maurizio Arrivabene conceded. "It was the wrong decision. We made a mistake." So too did Vettel as he sought to chase down Hamilton in the final stages, sliding off at the final corner not once but twice. While he loses half a point for those errors, this was nevertheless an outstanding performance from a driver who out-qualified his team-mate by over half a second on Saturday.
Rating: 8.5
After bursting onto the scene two years ago, prompting links with Ferrari, Valtteri Bottas has been somewhat the forgotten driver in 2016. Not any more.
The podium was his and Williams' first of the season and second in as many years in Canada, and both can attribute the result to a brave one-stop strategy. Not only were the tyres hanging on, but that Mercedes-powered FW38 was almost impossible to overtake down the straights in Bottas's control.
Whether his future belongs with the Grove team remains to be seen but displays like these are a reminder of his talent in what he admits is the fourth strongest car on the grid. "It was definitely one of my best races," said the Finn, who will hope to use third place as a springboard for Azerbaijan, Austria and the rest.
Rating: 9
After the wildly contrasting fortunes of Spain and Monaco, Max Verstappen's third grand prix for Red Bull probably won't prove one of the most memorable of his career - yet, crucially, it delivered a steadying fourth-place result.
Unlike the last race, when Verstappen was a crash magnet for the Monte Carlo barriers, it was Daniel Ricciardo who looked the more ragged of the two around Montreal on Sunday. Verstappen immediately made up for his third straight qualifying defeat by getting ahead at the start and, just when it looked as though he was going to have to cede position to the sister car in the first stint, the Dutchman upped his pace. "When Daniel got close behind I then decided it was time to push," he explained.
Verstappen described the closing stages, when he was increasingly harried by Rosberg, as "the hardest 10 laps of my life" but in the end it was the championship leader who made the critical mistake.
Rating: 8
Much like his Sunday in Monaco, Nico Rosberg's race day in Montreal can briefly be described as a series of mini calamities that, taken together, added up to a desperately bad afternoon.
His description of Hamilton's first-corner defence as being "really tough" may have been accurate in isolation but lacked the context of his own questionable decision to attack his team-mate around the outside in a corner that barely fits a single F1 car. The fact that the stewards didn't regard the incident as worthy of even a second, cursory review spoke volumes about Rosberg's mistaken race craft in that incident.
From there - or to be more precise, from the grass around the first corner - Rosberg's afternoon kept on unravelling, culminating in the final indignity of a spin while trying to overtake Verstappen. A championship lead which stood at 43 points two weeks ago is now down to nine and all the momentum has swung to the other side of the Mercedes garage.
Rating: 6
Though Kimi Raikkonen insists he wants to stay at Ferrari for 2017, the outcome will be taken out of his hands with more races like these. In the race he was valiant at times in holding off an aggressive Red Bull, but 0.589s is just too big a gap to be leaving to your team-mate in qualifying. The problems are going to mount when you're starting a race down in sixth.
Ferrari's engine improvements were plain for all to see in Montreal and Raikkonen didn't capitalise. A decent start to the season, yes - but there are so many young, hungry and talented drivers who would do anything to unleash the SF16-H's full potential.
Raikkonen followed his team-mate into the pits at the end of the Virtual Safety Car period and said he struggled to get the fresh tyres up to temperature when rejoining in traffic. "It was not an easy race," he said. Quite.
Rating: 5
It was hard to tell who Daniel Ricciardo was really more annoyed with after his most disappointing race of the season.
Himself, for flat-spotting his tyres with an error at the final chicane which prompted an early second pit stop, or the team - again - for strategy calls he labelled "a bit average". While he insisted on Thursday he had moved on from the pit-stop fiasco of Monaco, his subsequent open warning he would consider leaving the team if they didn't come up with a title-contending car seemed to reinforce suggestions that tensions still linger.
Given he feels he should be winning world championships at this stage of his career, seventh place was hardly the required result from a fine fourth on the grid.
Rating: 6
At long last, Nico Hulkenberg caught a break in Montreal. While his qualifying lap in Monaco - grabbing fifth on the grid - went painfully unrewarded two weeks ago, Hulkenberg's two-tenths defeat of team-mate Sergio Perez neatly accounted for a two-place victory over the Mexican in Montreal.
There wasn't much else to it. "The story of my race was simply tyre management," reported Nico afterwards. A steady, quietly impressive, professional day's work then - exactly the type of performance we have to come to expect from Hulkenberg over the years.
Rating: 8.5
A certain world champion may claim otherwise, but is there a driver in better form than Carlos Sainz right now? Starting 20th thanks to the Wall of Champions and gearbox change was a bitter blow - finishing in the points was just genius.
The Spaniard crucially overtook slower cars from the off and then executed the two-stop strategy, once again getting the better of his team-mate. In Sky F1's qualifying show the youngster said he wants a world title - at Red Bull - sooner rather than later, and they may not be able to ignore his talent too much longer on this season's evidence.
"If you had told me before the race that I would have finished in P9 after starting P20, I would've probably signed immediately," a jubilant Sainz said.
Rating: 9
No Monaco-style heroics from Sergio Perez this time, although you can't fault Force India for effort in their attempts to try a one-stop race.
The chilly conditions just weren't playing ball though and Perez lost ground to the McLarens at the start from 11th on the grid on his soft tyres. Starting the final stint in 12th, he overtook Daniil Kvyat and Fernando Alonso on the same lap and secured the final point. It just never looked like getting much better than that.
Rating: 7
And the rest...
For line of the day, look no further than the post-Canadian GP McLaren press release and this quote attributed to Fernando Alonso: "I enquired about the possibility of fitting fresh tyres for the last few laps". By 'enquiry', Alonso means he let out the loudest of groans over the team radio after being told to stay out by his team. The Spaniard spent the final fifty laps of the race locked onto a one-stop strategy waiting for rain that never fell, and the "can we stop now" request wasn't quite as polite as it sounded in McLaren's post-mortem.
This was a grim day for the team with Jenson Button's engine blowing and Alonso simply going backwards throughout the second half of a race, culminating in 11th place and what must have been one of the most frustrating and unenjoyable races of his career.
Rating: 6.5
Red Bull's decision to drop Daniil Kvyat back down to Toro Rosso is making more sense with every grand prix. The Russian has not recovered mentally and the strain and pressure must be immense, but he simply had to out-perform Sainz if he was to restore his reputation.
He isn't at present. Mistakes in Monaco earned him a penalty and 16th place here, and he couldn't make a two-stop work like others. "It was quite a boring race today," Kvyat admitted.
Rating: 5
It's now 30 consecutive F1 races for Esteban Gutierrez outside the points, although finishing as the lead Haas car in qualifying and the race may have put a small smile on his face at the end of a weekend when he felt under the weather.
Although overtaken by Romain Grosjean on lap nine, he got back ahead of his team-mate when the Frenchman had to pit with a broken front wing. But a twice-lapped 13th was ultimately rather forgettable.
Rating: 6
Romain Grosjean may keep talking up a potential Ferrari switch but not only does he need to rediscover both his and the Haas' form from earlier this season - he needs to at least beat his team-mate.
A third pit stop due to a broken front wing cost the Frenchman on this occasion but his performances, both on Saturdays and Sundays have dropped. His second place at the 2012 Canadian GP was just a distant memory as he struggled round to 14th.
Rating: 5.5
Finishing 15th in F1 doesn't often account for much recognition, but Marcus Ericsson deserves plenty for dominating proceedings at Sauber in Montreal. One second ahead of Felipe Nasr in qualifying before finishing 33 seconds ahead of his team-mate at the end of 68 laps in the race, Ericsson continues to get more out of what meagre pace there is in the C35. The shame for his career prospects is that the team are a world away from the points.
Rating: 8
Kevin Magnussen thanked his mechanics for even getting the chance to race on Sunday following his P3 crash, but in truth starting the grand prix was as good as it got for the Dane. He even managed to shunt into Felipe Nasr at turn one.
The Dane, like many others, complained that he couldn't heat his tyres up in the conditions and will have been disappointed to finish behind a Sauber. Renault have the engine, now they need results.
Rating: 5
Manor took on ailing Sauber in Montreal with Pascal Wehrlein personally putting in one of his most convincing performances relative to team-mate Rio Haryanto yet.
After out-qualifying both of their rivals' cars, and getting within a tenth of the Haas cars, Wehrlein's race was compromised by floor damage picked up on the way to the grid, with Marcus Ericsson getting ahead in the lead Sauber mid-way through the race.
Rating: 7.5
Another sloppy afternoon for Felipe Nasr, who argued that his race was compromised after the "unnecessary" move from Magnussen.
Ericsson may have impressed but Sauber's expected upgrades for the British GP are badly needed, if not just to put a smile back on Nasr's face. There are rumours circulating that he will look to take his significant sponsorship elsewhere if the package doesn't improve.
Rating: 5
A challenging Circuit Gilles Villeneuve debut for Rio Haryanto. Consigned to the back of the grid after hitting the turn four wall in the drizzle of Q1, the team believe he could have beaten Nasr in the race but for a slow first pit stop. In the end, Haryanto was cut adrift by half a minute in 19th and last place.
Rating: 5
Did not finish: Felipe Massa, Jolyon Palmer and Jenson Button
