The big swings in the F1 championship gave some leeway to the selection of Canadian Grand Prix winners and losers…and so did some teams’ reactions to the weather…
Loser: George Russell (DNF)
It’s been a worrying weekend for George Russell not only as he faces a 43-point gap in the championship due to a power unit problem that forced him out of the race while leading.
But he was concerned about how annoying his 19-year-old Mercedes teammate Kimi Antonelli was at one of Russell’s strongest circuits all weekend.
Russell looked more composed in Sunday’s fight, but so did Antonelli. Fasteras he was for much of the weekend in Montreal.
This is a big headache for Russell to solve, as is a huge point deficit. – Josh Satir
Winner: Lewis Hamilton (2nd place)
We’ve seen Lewis Hamilton get off to a strong start to the weekend with Ferrari many times, but rarely have he had a comparable finish.
Not here, but at the Montreal circuit where he has been so successful.
Although he was given a boost by ditching the simulator and taking a new set-up direction before this event, his chances for a podium looked to be over after he was overtaken by Max Verstappen early on.
However, good execution during the pitstop phase allowed Hamilton to reduce the gap from over five seconds to zero, and his best pass to Verstappen was as good as expected, as he passed to the outside on the entrance to Turn 1, charged towards the apex and controlled the exit, then controlled the entrance to Turn 2.
A weekend where you can forget last season and Hamilton’s bit of a disappointment at Ferrari and rewind a few years – he looked a suitably terrifying threat in every sense of the word in Montreal. – Jack Benyon
Loser: McLaren (11th & DNF)
Sunday in Montreal was an embarrassing one for McLaren with multiple errors in what was otherwise a very good weekend.
Choosing the right tires in mixed conditions is never easy, but putting both cars on intermediates on a track that was clearly not wet was a clear mistake without the benefit of hindsight.
The situation was made worse by several driver mistakes, with Lando Norris running across the grass and Oscar Piastri punting Alex Albon’s Williams at the hairpin.
The resulting damage and 10-second time penalty ruined Piastri’s chances of recovering up to the points, but Norris was firmly back in the top ten until a reported gearbox problem forced him to retire. -JS
Winner: Kimi Antonelli (1st place)
The biggest thing today was 25 points compared to Russell’s 0 points. Russell can now beat Antonelli in the third straight all-Mercedes championship, but he will still be one point short of canceling out today’s impact.
However, we have to season the internal dynamics of Mercedes and walk the main course of point swing. Indeed, Antonelli was too impatient in the sprint and dropped out of the top two. Indeed, he lost Paul. Indeed, he was second in the Grand Prix when Russell’s car conked out.
That’s not the case I felt it, However. That’s not the essence. On a weekend that was supposed to normalize the balance of power between Mercedes’ stable of veterans and young sophomores, Antonelli consistently appeared to be pushing Russell into a corner.
For Russell, he’s too good to be at all optimistic about overturning the current 43-point lead. – Valentin Coloungy
Loser: Charles Leclerc (4th place)
Charles Leclerc said on Saturday that this had been one of the worst weekends in F1, and Sunday didn’t feel much better either.
Struggling with his brakes, then his tires, and then his overall feel, Leclerc was stuck in fifth place in the race until he was jumped by Isak Hajar during the pit stop stage, and then Hajar almost forced Leclerc off the road, which cost him further time.
He managed to win, but remained in fourth place for the remainder of the race, as Russell’s retirement moved him up the order. And when told that his Ferrari teammate Hamilton had increased his pace at one point during the race, Leclerc reprimanded the engineer and told him, in a blunt message, not to talk to him until the final lap.
It was a truly disappointing weekend, one of the rare ones in recent years – Leclerc was overshadowed by his team-mates.
“It feels good to maximize points on a day like this, but the bigger feeling in a race like this is disappointment over a poor performance like this,” he said. -J.B.
Winner: Franco Colapinto (6th place)
Franco Colapinto has been in good form in recent races for Alpine, having repeatedly beaten his team-mate after losing last year to Pierre Gasly, and believes he is fully worthy of a F1 seat again, just as he did with Williams.
There’s not much to report from his race, where he could have finished eighth had McLaren not collapsed, but you can’t control other people’s results or performance.
Colapinto and Alpine were nowhere near the top three teams in the race, but Colapinto had another error-free weekend.
And his reward is the best finish of his F1 career to date. -J.B.
Loser: Alex Albon (DNF)
This makes it a strong contender for the toughest weekend of Albon’s F1 career to date.
Things start when Albon collides with a groundhog during practice, crashes into a wall, and misses the sprint qualifying.
He then performed reasonably well in the Grand Prix despite limited track time, but was torpedoed off the track by Oscar Piastri at a hairpin.
Albon couldn’t catch a break in Montreal. -JS
Winner: Liam Lawson (7th place)
Liam Lawson probably described his seventh place better than anyone: “Taking everything into account this weekend, it was a good result.”
He is never wrong. Lawson, who missed almost all of Friday’s practice, had to start the sprint from scratch. Lawson, who certainly took advantage of the misfortune of other drivers ahead of him to get into the points on Sunday, also had to deal with tire temperature issues and general strategy bugs to get over the line.
This was as much as Colapinto could do given his superior pace in the Alpine ahead, but Lawson showed he was more than up to the task by holding off Gasly in the closing stages to take home a welcome seventh place.
Just as Lawson said, it was a good result that gave the Racing Bulls some well-deserved points after an overall difficult weekend. – Eden Hannigan
Loser: Arvid Lindblad (DNS)
Lawson’s final result was perhaps all the more satisfying as he had been a shadow of the Racing Bulls until the two cars’ fates suddenly switched on the Grand Prix grid.
Rookie Arvid Lindblad was enjoying his most convincing weekend since Melbourne, where he got off to a great start with ninth, eighth and ninth places in an intense pre-race Montreal session.
However, a clutch problem prevented him from getting off to the start, and Lindblad never got a chance to continue his good form at the Grand Prix. -JS
Winner: Carlos Sainz (9th place)
Getting two points back from a race that started on bad weather tires is clearly a big win, especially for a team in Williams’ position.
Carlos Sainz was pretty much on his own for Williams here, given his horror weekend of team-mates’ mishaps – and all hopes were nearly ended when a call for a substitute start was credited to him and quickly turned out to be a disaster.
Winning the points required attrition up front and an assist from Haas, with Olly Bearman taking the free spot with a horribly late pit stop. “He wouldn’t have done that [beaten me] – But I stood still in the pit for a while, ”Bearman lamented.
“But it basically shows that you can score points today with a middling car as long as you finish the race.”
But the keyword was “half-decent” or better, and Sainz genuinely felt the FW48 could race.
“After the first stop from Inter to Medium, we had mega pace. To be honest, for a moment we were as fast or faster than the McLarens around us, but we had the same strategy.
“That helped us get back in the points, back in contention and get the race back on track, because it took something special to turn it around.” -VK
Losers: Audi (12th and 13th)
In theory at least one Audi could and probably should have scored points in Sunday’s race, but that card never went ahead as teams were misguided to start in the intermediate race.
Both drivers defended their decision, explaining that Audi’s record of struggling to heat up its tires on cold roads meant starting at the inters seemed like the right decision, although Hulkenberg admitted with hindsight that it was “definitely not the right thing to do”.
Gabriel Bortleto remained in 13th place despite the three drivers who started in front of him not seeing the finish. He described it as “feeling like driving on ice” after experiencing the coldest race of his short F1 career to date.
Hulkenberg also received a penalty for speeding in the pit lane, dropping him one place from his starting position to 12th, but he felt that “in a race like this, it didn’t really matter.”
Both drivers reflected their faith in Audi’s strong package, but tires and bad decisions meant both drivers left Canada without the points they had hoped for. – Eh
Loser: Aston Martin (15th & DNF)
Aston Martin knows it won’t have a particularly fast car anytime soon, so until that happens, ideally it will maximize its chances of profiting from the misfortune of others by becoming more adept at finishing races.
Retiring a fast driver due to a seat problem doesn’t make him “good at finishing the race,” but Fernando Alonso claimed that it was more frustrating to see his position go from 10th place after five laps to double-digit seconds before he retired.
The less said about Lance Stroll’s entire weekend, the better. -VK
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