2010 Canadian Grand Prix report

“For me,” said Lewis Hamilton on Sunday afternoon, “this is one of the best races of the season – a fantastic crowd, a great atmosphere, and such a great track…”

It was at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve three years ago that Hamilton won his first Grand Prix, and this time around, too, he was always the man to beat. A memorable last-second pole position, and then a superb race drive, during which he was under pressure for virtually the entire distance. As in Turkey a fortnight ago it was a McLaren 1-2, with Jenson Button just a couple of seconds adrift of Lewis at the flag. Fernando Alonso, having pushed Hamilton hard for much of the afternoon, finished third finally, having suffered more than most from the traffic problems endemic to Montréal.

Fundamentally, the Canadian Grand Prix was all about tyres. In the old days, before refuelling was banned, tyre wear wasn’t too much of a consideration – essentially you raced a car in qualifying spec, always light, always on new-ish tyres. Now, though, looking after your tyres – particularly when the car is fuel-heavy in the early laps – has become an important new discipline for the drivers to learn, and in Montréal ‘graining’ was a problem for everyone, particularly with the softer of the Bridgestone compounds on offer (both compounds, of course, must be used during a race).

After qualifying the feeling was that Red Bull were in the pound seats, for although Hamilton had beaten them to pole position, Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel (together with Renault’s Robert Kubica) had set their times on the harder Bridgestones. It was a certainty that all their major rivals would have to make a very early stop, at which point, went the received wisdom, Webber and Vettel would canter away into the distance.

In the event, it didn’t work out that way. Yes, the McLarens were indeed in early (Button stopping on lap six, Hamilton a lap later), but significantly Kubica – on the hard tyres, remember – was in after nine laps, and the Red Bulls stopped after 13 (Webber) and 14 (Vettel) laps. With a heavy fuel load, in other words, the harder Bridgestones didn’t last anything like as long as expected.

Even before the race started Mark’s day began badly, for his car required a gearbox change and that meant a five-place penalty on the grid, so that he started seventh, rather than second. Certainly Vettel had pushed Hamilton in the first few laps, but he was never able to get by him, and even with a clear track was unable to build enough of a cushion to keep his lead through his own first stop.

When the first round of stops was all done Hamilton was in front, chased hard by Alonso, then Button – and then Vettel and Webber. All (except Vettel) were now on the harder tyres – but McLaren and Ferrari, of course, already had the more troublesome soft ones out of the way.

This season, with refuelling banned, we have become accustomed to single-stop strategies, everyone beginning the race on the soft tyres, then coming for the harder ones and running through to the finish on them. Even though the track surface at Montréal is not particularly abrasive, though, that policy looked out of the question thanks to the graining problems, and ahead of the race Bridgestone folk reckoned everyone would need to stop at least twice.

So it proved, and different folk threw the dice in different ways. The Red Bull drivers, as we have said, both started on hard tyres, but when they made their first stops Vettel opted to switch to soft, whereas Webber took another set of hard.

In the short term, at least, this worked well for Mark. As the race neared half-distance, the three drivers ahead of him – Hamilton, Alonso, Vettel – all made their second stops, whereas Webber was able to stay out and at this point took over the lead. For 20 laps he looked very comfortable, but eventually the grip began to go away and his problem was that, with only his soft Bridgestones to come, he was obliged to stay out as long as possible before changing to them.

By lap 50, with 20 to the flag, Hamilton passed the hobbled Red Bull in front of the pits, and at the end of the lap Webber duly came in. This left Hamilton to fight off the advances of Alonso, while Fernando, at his absolute best in Montréal, was obliged also to keep a weather eye on Button.

On lap 56 Alonso was badly held up by the tardy HRT of Chandhok, which changed line unexpectedly in front of him. So much did the Ferrari have to slow that in an instant Button was past, and away up the road. Fernando, who had suffered similarly at the hand of Trulli’s Lotus earlier in the race, was afterwards remarkably charitable about the slow traffic: “Yes, I had a bad time with it today, but sometimes, you know, it can work to your advantage – over a season it evens out for everyone…”

Thereafter there was nothing to be done for Alonso, but although he finished only third he was delighted to be back on the podium. “It’s strange, this Formula 1,” he said later. “In Turkey we were nowhere – completely out of it – and we bring exactly the same car to Canada, and we’re competitive! I really think we had the pace to win today. For the next race, in Valencia, we have some major updates on the car, and I hope then we can start to be competitive everywhere…”

There was no denying the McLarens, though. With the air cleared between them, after the spot of unpleasantness in Istanbul, Hamilton and Button were all smiles afterwards. “It was a very difficult race,” said Jenson, “because of the tyre situation. The whole time you’re driving you never know if you’re not pushing hard enough because you’re saving your tyres – or maybe you’re pushing too hard, and hurting them. It’s so easy to grain tyres here…”

Hamilton agreed that it had been a tough race: “There’s the tyres, of course, but also the traffic is always a big problem here – almost as bad as at Monaco. I must say, too, that I was amazed there was no safety car period – you almost always get at least one here. Still, the car was fantastic, I must say, and I didn’t have worries here about running low on fuel – I managed to save some at certain points in the race, and there was no problem at all.”

Neither Red Bull driver made the podium in Canada, but in fact neither Vettel nor Webber was too disappointed. “We didn’t really expect to shine here,” said Mark. “It’s not really a track that brings out our car’s best qualities. But we scored some useful points – and Valencia, I’m sure, will be good for us.”

Sixth, behind Vettel and Webber, was Nico Rosberg, who drove a thoroughly excellent race for Mercedes after being disastrously held up by a first corner contretemps between Tonio Liuzzi’s Force India and Felipe Massa’s Ferrari. Rosberg was actually in 13^th place at the end of the opening lap, but came back strongly, on the way setting the third fastest lap of the Grand Prix.

His team-mate was rather less distinguished – indeed, this was probably the worst drive by Michael Schumacher most people could remember. Having qualified only 13^th, Michael made a good start and his race looked promising for a while, but thereafter we seemed to see only the worst of him, prompting one former F1 driver to comment that he drove ‘like a bad-tempered old man’. Off the pace, and plainly not enjoying the experience, Schumacher blocked and weaved and chopped, just as he always did, but now he was doing it from 12^th place, or whatever, and there was something curiously sad about it. This, after all, was a man who had won the Canadian Grand Prix seven times…