What a weekend of racing we’ve had! The action-packed Canadian Grand Prix, the unbelievably close Le Mans 24 Hours and of course, the MotoGP round at Silverstone.

This week I’m joined by Damien Smith and Rob Widdows who help me analyse as much racing as possible in 18 minutes!

As always, let us know your thoughts.

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So he is human, after all. As on so many other occasions this year, Sebastian Vettel dominated the Canadian Grand Prix – but only for 69 and a half of the 70 laps. Under pressure from Jenson Button on the last lap, Vettel got momentarily off the dry line, flicked sideways – and that was all Button needed. “In lots of ways I was lucky today,” Jenson said, “but still it was a very sweet win – maybe my best ever…”

The unforgiving Circuit Gilles Villeneuve invariably throws up an eventful Grand Prix, but this one was something else again. On a day of appalling weather, the race started behind the safety car, and Bernd Maylander would take to the track on four further occasions before the afternoon was done. So overwhelming was the rain that, 45 minutes into the race, after 15 laps behind the safety car, it was decided to bring out the red flag.

Unquestionably it was the right thing to do, and the right time to do it. Soon the rain was ferocious, and it went on and on. By the time it eased, then finally stopped, the track was pretty well waterlogged. When the safety car led them away once more, for the restart, a little over two hours had elapsed since the halt.

As usual Vettel started from pole position, but on this occasion his margin of superiority was rather less than usual – less than a couple of tenths – and Fernando Alonso, on the front row of the grid for the first time this year, quite fancied his chances. “This was always going to be one of Ferrari’s best circuits,” he said, “because it doesn’t have any really fast corners, so our lack of downforce is less of a problem than usual…”

By the same token, Red Bull – whose cars are unapproachable in quick corners – expected Montreal to be one of their weaker tracks. “Of course I’m pleased to be on pole,” said Vettel, “but actually I’m a little surprised…”

Perhaps Seb was being a touch disingenuous. The Red Bull may excel on circuits where aerodynamic grip is all, but it’s not less than outstanding anywhere. Mark Webber qualified fourth – behind the two Ferraris – but when you factored in that he had missed Saturday morning practice because of KERS problems on his car, and then qualified without KERS, his time said everything about Adrian Newey’s latest sublime design.

The team which disappointed most in qualifying was undoubtedly McLaren, with Lewis Hamilton fifth fastest, and Button seventh. Hamilton won here last year, and hopes were high of a repeat, but on Saturday evening he glumly said that the car was ‘simply too slow’. Martin Whitmarsh conceded that probably McLaren had run too much wing, and consequently suffered on straight line speed; on the other hand, he pointed out, if it were – as forecast – to rain on race day, Lewis and Jenson might find themselves in the pound seats.

It didn’t quite start out that way, however. After four laps behind the safety car, the field was flagged away on a wet track – and at the very first corner Hamilton tagged the back of Webber, putting the Red Bull into a spin. “I think,” Mark drily observed, “that Lewis saw the chequered flag at turn three…”

They raced for only three laps before the safety car was out again – this time because the McLarens had contrived to run into each other on the pit straight, Hamilton trying to pass on the left, and getting squeezed into the wall. “I’ve apologised to Lewis,” Jenson said. “I honestly couldn’t see a thing behind me…” Hamilton’s brief, but eventful, Canadian Grand Prix was over.

The safety car was out for five laps on this occasion, and when they restarted, at the end of lap 12, Vettel immediately disappeared into his own race again, pulling out 2.5 seconds on Alonso in the course of a single lap. Webber, meantime, was working his way back through the field following the first lap altercation with Hamilton. It was announced around this time, too, that Button had been given a ‘drive through’ penalty for a safety car infringement.

On lap 17 Ferrari brought Alonso in for a change from wets to intermediates, and the team’s timing could not have been worse. Within a couple of minutes the rain began to come down hard again, and, as Fernando stopped once more, to take on more wets, out came the safety car again, this time simply because the conditions were adjudged too dangerous to allow racing to continue. After 15 laps of tooling round, the decision was taken to halt proceedings until the rain began to ease off.

The wait was longer than anyone might have anticipated – it began at 1.45, and it was not until 3.50 that the race was restarted, again behind the safety car, of course, for it appears that the days of conventional starts on wet days are now consigned to history.

When the race did get away again – on lap 26 – it was brief indeed, for Alonso and Button touched as Jenson tried to pass on the inside of a right-hander, and the Ferrari spun over the kerb, and was instantly beached. Safety car once more – and for Alonso no points from a race of which he had had such high expectations. As Button made his way to the pits to replace a punctured tyre, it was announced that the incident – like countless others on this day – was ‘under investigation by the stewards’.

Conditions remained extremely treacherous, and clearly they brought out the best in Schumacher, who was turning in the best performance of his unhappy ‘second career’. On lap 42 Michael passed Webber, and proceeded to close up on Kobayashi and Massa, who were scrapping over second place.

Unlike most drivers Kamui, at the time the race was red-flagged, had not yet made a tyre stop, which meant that he (and both the Renault drivers) effectively got the stop free, the tyre changing being done during the enforced break. He drove a typically spirited race in Montreal, but when at one point he moved to cover a move by Massa the effect was to slow both of them – and Schumacher, close at hand, took the opportunity to snick by into second place! Michael perhaps on the podium again…in the Mercedes pit they could barely contain their excitement.

By lap 56, with 14 to the flag, Vettel led comfortably from Schumacher, who was fending off Webber, then Button, Kobayashi, Heidfeld and Massa. Out of the second turn Heidfeld ran into the back of Kobayashi’s Sauber, and damaged his front wing – which then broke violently enough to lift the front wheels from the ground: the Renault pitched into a wall, and out came the safety car again…

It was this incident which was to change the outcome of the race – and there was something else, too. The rules prohibit the use of DRS (the opening rear wing) in the wet, but now the track – or at least a ‘line’ round the track – was swiftly drying out, and everyone was on slicks. One wondered if and when Charlie Whiting would use his discretion to enable DRS again. It would not be long.

As before, Vettel charged away again on the restart, and looked firmly set on another 25 points. Within a couple of laps he was three seconds clear, but then, as he admitted later, he took it perhaps a little too conservatively – and perhaps reckoned without the effect of DRS on some of those behind him.

By lap 63 it was operational, and its dramatic effect – whether you like it or not – was clearly seen, for Webber, having been unable to pass Schumacher without it, now went past as if the Mercedes were parked. Immediately, though, Mark went over the final chicane, and although he had already cleared Schumacher he was concerned that he might be penalised – considered to have gained by cutting the chicane – and therefore he handed the place back to Michael. On the following lap he might have hoped to take the position for good, but instead was passed by Button, who was clearly on a charge.

“I love conditions like we had towards the end of the race,” Jenson said, “and the car was working beautifully…” On lap 65 he was 3.1 seconds behind Vettel; on lap 66 the gap was down to 1.6.

At this point we expected Sebastian simply to respond, to draw away again in the manner we have so often seen. He didn’t, though – indeed Button continued, little by little, to close.

On lap 67, with three to go, Webber got past Schumacher again, and this time made it stick, putting and end to Michael’s hopes of at last making a podium. No matter: this was consummately the best performance we have seen from him since his return, and fourth place was a good result.

Lap 68, and Vettel set the fastest lap of the race – which was instantly beaten by Button. Now the gap was an even second, so Jenson was bringing himself into DRS range of the World Championship leader. Next time round he was fractionally closer still, but not able to take a run at Seb: it would all come down to the last lap.

We expected that Button’s move would come – DRS-assisted – on the long straight at the end of the lap, but in the event he had no need of any such thing, for Vettel, responding to the pressure, got slightly off the dry line, and although he held the consequent slide it was too late to prevent the McLaren from going by. Half a lap from the end of the Canadian Grand Prix Jenson was into the lead, and there he stayed.

A tumultuous race, you might say, in every conceivable respect. How often does a driver come through five safety car periods, six pit stops, including a ‘drive through’ penalty, a puncture, contact with (at least) two other cars – and win a Grand Prix? I can remember nothing comparable. Button admitted that luck had been with him – “I couldn’t have done it without DRS and all the safety car periods” – but perhaps the biggest slice of it came from Emerson Fittipaldi, this weekend the driver advising the stewards.

On these occasions Fittipaldi has always shown himself to be fundamentally ‘on the side of the drivers’, and not given to dishing out penalties in an era when every little incident is scrutinised. It would have been criminal to have robbed Jenson of what he referred to as ‘his sweetest victory’. This was a wonderful drive.

Vettel, it must be said, was entirely magnanimous in defeat. After the last safety car period, he said, he probably should have gone harder, built up more of a lead, but who could blame him – in this season of endless victories – for being perhaps a touch complacent? No one’s saying it, of course, but the 2011 World Championship is already effectively won.

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All of a sudden the World Championship calendar is starting to look more than a little unbalanced – and, some would say, unstable. As of now, the 2009 schedule contains 17 races (two fewer than originally envisaged), and for the first time a majority of them will be run outside Formula 1’s cultural home, which, no matter what some might claim, has always been Europe.

We know why this has happened, of course. For a very long time Bernie Ecclestone was the ‘commercial rights holder’ in F1, and years ago bought them from the FIA for no fewer than 100 years for what most observers regarded as a derisorily small sum. No one needs to be reminded that Bernie likes to make a buck, but at least, while he owned the rights, he had the facility once in a while to do a deal with a race organiser that didn’t necessarily stack up financially, but was in the good interests of the sport and its competitors.

Since he sold the commercial rights to CVC Capital Partners, however, that situation has changed. To finance the deal, CVC had to borrow heavily – from the Royal Bank of Scotland, among others – and those loans are expensive to service. CVC did not get involved for reasons of altruism, and fundamentally couldn’t care less where the Grands Prix are run: all that matters is the bottom line, and inevitably that means more and more ultra-lucrative venues, where government backing is guaranteed. Bad news, of course, for Europe, which has the fans, the history and the heritage, but not the financial clout to compete.

As European races begin to disappear from the schedule, there is of course a risk that ultimately the fans will become disenchanted. Why did we have a ‘night race’ in Singapore? Because starting it at 8pm enabled it to be televised live at 1pm in Europe, a time convenient to TV viewers here. There will always be hardcore fans prepared to watch a race in the middle of the night, but not enough of them to please the TV companies, whose financial contribution to F1 is enormous.

The trend, therefore, is increasingly towards the East, Middle and Far. Already we have Bahrain, Australia, China, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore, and on the near horizon are Grands Prix in Abu Dhabi, India and South Korea.

Magny-Cours, France 1995. Damon Hill (Williams FW17 Renault) followed by Michael Schumacher (Benetton B195 Renault)

Given that Ecclestone has said that his intention is to stick with a maximum of 20 Grands Prix in a season, the influx of new countries necessarily means that some traditional ones will have to be shown the door. France has recently cancelled its 2009 race, citing the current economic situation as the reason, but next year’s would anyway have been the last Grand Prix at Magny-Cours. Another French venue may appear in time, but we shouldn’t hold our breath, and as far as the British Grand Prix is concerned, the ’09 race will be the last at Silverstone – the circuit which hosted the very first World Championship Grand Prix back in 1950. Will the race at Donington come to be reality? The F1 community has its doubts, let’s say.

1950 British Grand Prix at Silverstone. King George VI meets the drivers, including a young Stirling Moss in the foreground

Over time both Ecclestone and FIA president Max Mosley have endlessly stressed that something calling itself a World Championship should be just that – this was the reason given for expanding into Asia. But, that being so, is it not almost beyond belief that the 2009 calendar entirely bypasses a little continent called North America? This year we lost the US Grand Prix at Indianapolis, because Tony George was not prepared to keep pace with the new tariff of F1, as set by ‘government-funded’ events. That made the manufacturers – Mercedes, BMW, Honda, Toyota etc – extremely angry, for they quite like selling cars in the US.

1966 United States Grand Prix at Watkins Glen, New York. Jim Clark leads the field away

Now the Canadian Grand Prix, too, is gone, after more than 40 years on the schedule. Apparently the bill for the ’08 race has not – yet, anyway – been paid in full, and therefore the ’09 date has been lost. Once again the manufacturers are angry (to say nothing of the F1-mad Canadian fans), and it seems to me that it’s about time they did something with their anger, and put pressure on the powers-that-be. It is not only to the commercial rights holders that markets are important, after all.

As for the fans, well, as ever they get what they’re given, take it or leave it. And if increasing numbers, feeling ever more excluded, leave it, presumably the power brokers will consider that a price worth paying.

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A Grand Prix victory for BMW, and for Robert Kubica, had been coming a while, and in Montreal – the scene of Kubica’s horrific accident 12 months ago – it duly did. “We certainly didn’t have the quickest car,” Kubica said. “In fact, in competitive terms, this wasn’t our strongest race, although definitely our best result.”

Indeed it was. While a win for Kubica wasn’t a total surprise, his team mate Nick Heidfeld has struggled for pace throughout this season, and a starting position of eighth didn’t promise much. As it was, though, Heidfeld was aided both by a safety car period (virtually inevitable at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve) and a strategy switch to a one-stopper, and in the end he made Mario Theissen’s day complete by finishing second.

Without wishing to sound disrespectful, the fact that David Coulthard’s Red Bull finished third says much about the sort of race this was. For the accustomed front runners, Montreal was something of a disaster, Ferrari scoring only four points (from Felipe Massa’s fifth place) and McLaren none at all.

In 2007 Lewis Hamilton completely dominated the Canadian Grand Prix, and this time around he looked set to do the same again. After taking a remarkable pole position (by six-tenths, no less), Hamilton took an immediate lead, and proceeded to pull away from Kubica and the Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen. By lap 18 he led by seven seconds, and looked entirely comfortable, but a delayed decision to bring out the safety car (after Adrian Sutil’s Force India had expired in a dangerous spot) was to change the entire complexion of the day.

Once the pit lane had been declared open, all the front runners came in together, and for once a McLaren pit stop didn’t go particularly well. Kubica and Raikkonen were serviced more quickly than Hamilton, and the BMW and Ferrari were side by side as they headed for the exit of pit lane – where they stopped, in acknowledgement of a red light.

By the time he saw it – and took in that Robert and Kimi had stopped – Lewis had insufficient time to react, and ran into the back of the Ferrari, putting both cars out on the spot. “I have to thank Lewis,” observed Kubica dryly, “for choosing Kimi, and not me…”

Although the incident truly had been just one of those things, Raikkonen was understandably angry at being put out of the race this way, and Hamilton made no attempt to shirk responsibility, profusely apologising to him. Perhaps Sutil, who was taken out of the Monaco Grand Prix by Raikkonen, permitted himself a wry smile.

Coming into this race, Hamilton and Raikkonen were first and second in the World Championship, and if neither scored a point, Lewis lost more than Kimi in Canada, for on this occasion his McLaren was discernibly the best car in the place, and Montreal presented an opportunity to extend his points lead.

Nor was that the end of the bad news for Hamilton. After examining video evidence of the incident, the stewards announced after the race that both Lewis and Nico Rosberg (who, in his turn, ran lightly into the back of the McLaren) would be ‘fined’ 10 grid places at the next race, at Magny-Cours on June 22. When Raikkonen speared into Sutil at Monte Carlo, it will be remembered, no penalty was imposed: if McLaren folk were not as well balanced as they are, they might well start to get paranoid…

Although the first seven had pitted during the safety car period, those behind had stayed out, so when racing resumed, after three laps, the order board had a most unusual look about it: Heidfeld led, followed by Barrichello’s Honda, Nakajima’s Williams, the Red Bulls of Webber and Coulthard, the Toyotas of Trulli and Glock, Fisichella’s Force India and Vettel’s Toro Rosso.

All these, of course, had yet to make a stop, so the ‘true’ leader was Kubica, for the moment back in 10th place, stuck behind slower cars, and under some pressure from Alonso’s Renault.

Fernando has had few chances to figure seriously in a Grand Prix this season, but there is no feistier racer in the business. He wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity to score some decent points, and for a time hassled Kubica.

“It wasn’t an easy situation,” Robert said. “I was stuck in slower traffic, which hadn’t yet pitted, and at the same time Fernando was pushing hard.”

Eventually, of course, that traffic began to dissipate, as drivers came in for fuel and tyres. Heidfeld gave up his lead on lap 29, at which point it was decided to switch him to a one-stop strategy. Fuelled up to go the distance, Nick now had a very heavy car, and he rejoined immediately in front of Kubica, who swiftly dispensed with him.

Now it was Heidfeld’s turn to come under pressure from Alonso, but that ended on lap 45 when the Renault made light, but terminal, contact with the wall.

Fernando is not one to make mistakes, but he, like everyone else, had found the track conditions very treacherous this day. During qualifying, the previous afternoon, the surface had begun to break up badly at three corners, one of them the hairpin. Some patching work was done that night, and more on race morning, but all the drivers were apprehensive about how it would hold during the race. “It was bloody hard,” remarked Coulthard. “Thankfully, it didn’t break up as badly as it had in qualifying, but still there was a lot of debris around. If you went even a little off line, you were effectively on loose gravel, and it just sucked you in…”

Once Alonso was gone, the BMWs were firmly established at the front of the pack, but Kubica, who still had another stop to make (where Heidfeld did not), was concerned about losing his lead when he came in.
“I’d lost so much time when I was stuck in the traffic, but fortunately I had a clear track by this time, and I realised I had eight laps – the time of my last stop – to build a lead of 21 seconds, which I’d need to stay ahead of Nick. It was like running a series of qualifying laps…”

He did it brilliantly, in fact building up an advantage of 24 seconds, and easily keeping his lead through the final stop. “After that, I was safe, and I didn’t push too hard – but still those last laps were difficult, because if you were off line you felt as though you were driving on sand…”

A superb first win, then, for both driver and team. Behind Heidfeld, Coulthard had his best finish of the season to date, and Timo Glock was thrilled to score his first points for Toyota, being narrowly ahead of Massa’s Ferrari.

Felipe, it must be said, drove a brilliant race in very difficult circumstances. He had qualified disappointingly, and took a while to get going, but was then unlucky to encounter fuel rig problems at his first stop. “A joint in the fuel line broke, and no fuel went in,” he said, “so I had to come in again on the next lap, and that dropped me right to the back…” After a very combative afternoon, Massa took an excellent fifth place, ahead of Trulli, Barrichello and Vettel.

The background to the Canadian weekend was – what else? – the vexed question of Max Mosley, and the apparent rift between the (at least temporarily) reprieved FIA President and the entire F1 community. We live in interesting times indeed, and not a few in the paddock wish them a little less so. The suggestion from one of his henchmen was that, since surviving the vote on June 3, Mosley had had no contact with Bernie Ecclestone – indeed had declined to take his calls. Was it really the case that they hadn’t spoken? Ecclestone said yes, it was. “At the moment,” a leading team principal commented, “Formula 1 is in very dangerous waters.”

Robert Kubica, though, reckoned he would start worrying about that on Monday.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine