Hamilton takes Canadian Grand Prix victory
Lewis Hamilton has taken his second consecutive victory by winning the Canadian Grand Prix at Montreal. Sebastian Vettel in the Ferrari did however put up a serious challenge, but an inferior pitstop strategy cost the German the win. Valtteri Bottas finished third in a Williams.
Even though it briefly rained 10 minutes ahead of the start of the race, the actual start was a normal one, with the track completely dry.
As is common though at Circuit de Gilles Villeneuve, the first few corners proved to be interesting yet again, this time mostly because Hamilton missed his start. It wasn't really terrible, but bad enough to see Vettel fly past and take the lead well ahead of turn 1. Rosberg came aside as well, but found Hamilton unwilling to give some space, leading to bumping front wheels and forcing Rosberg to go off track. As he returned to the racing track, numerous cars flew past, eventually relegating Rosberg to 10th, behind Alonso and Hulkenberg.
Vettel really made quite an impression in the first lap, steaming away from the rest of the pack until missing the final chicane, forcing him to take the recovery route. His advantage though was such that he still maintained the lead, but he was unable to shake off Hamilton after that.
On ap 10, the race was finished for Button as his Honda engine blew at the start of the back straight. The event introduced a brief virtual safety car period that triggered Ferrari to pit both their cars. Vettel returned to the track on a new set of super softs. He was 4th, 3 seconds down on Verstappen and Ricciardo, and 2.5 ahead of Bottas. Raikkonen also switched to super soft, but the Finn found himself down in 13th position after his stop.
Carlos Sainz meanwhile pitted one lap later, changing to softs in an attempt to get out of traffic and attempt to eventually end up in the points after his start from 20th place.
By lap 19, Vettel was back up in second place after two straightforward overtaking moves on the Red Bull drivers. At about the same time, Alonso endured a slow pitstop of 8.3 seconds, while Palmer got revered into the pitbox to retire from the race.
On lap 21, Verstappen pitted to take on a set of new softs. Ricciardo and Rosberg did exactly the same one lap later. Hamilton changed to new softs on lap 25, following a fastest lap by Vettel that saw his advantage reduced to 5 seconds.
That put Vettel back in the lead, 13s ahead of Hamilton. Verstappen ran in a lonely third place at that time, followed by Raikkonen, Ricciardo and Bottas, all three closely behind each other. Rosberg firmly joined that little train around lap 32, following a fastest lap from him. It lasted until lap 34 when Raikkonen pitted for new sots, having pretty much used up his super softs.
On lap 37, Vettel pitted to change to new softs, rejoining the track 7 seconds down on Hamilton. Moments earlier, Massa also entered the pitlane, but to retire with technical difficulties.
Ricciardo on the other hand badly locked up his front left wheel during braking for the final chicane, allowing Bottas to get past. Rosberg soon threated to get past as well until the Australian pitted himself one lap later to change to a set of used soft tyres.
23 laps from the end, Vettel only managed to get two seconds closer to Hamilton compared to immediately after his stop. One of the reasons was Romain Grosjean, who cost the Ferrari driver at least a second as he failed to rapidly move aside. Verstappen, who ran in third place since the start of the race, dropped back to 5th after stopping to change his softs for a used set of super softs.
This put Bottas in third with Rosberg following closely in fourth. The latter did however report numerous warnings on his steering wheel, to which his race engineer simply replied "the warning are real". 5 laps later, the German pitted for a set of used softs, rejoining in 7th place, 3 seconds down on Raikkonen and Ricciardo.
By lap 59, with 11 left, Rosberg got past Ricciardo and Raikkonen again, to move up into 5th place. His much fresher soft tyres enabled him to be at least a second a lap quicker than anybody else out on track. It also meant he pushed on and found himself looking at the back of Verstappen 4 laps later.
At the front, Hamilton set some personal bests on his 50 lap old softs while Vettel missed the final chicane twice as he seemingly started to struggle with the degradation on his tyres.
In the end, Hamilton enjoyed his second consecutive victory, thanks to a more solid pitstop strategy and error free driving.
