"We were lucky with the safety car", says Verstappen as Perez endured another shock result
The early part of yesterday's Canadian Grand Prix saw Max Verstappen fail to respond to George Russell's and then Lando Norris' pace, but a well-timed safety car helped him to take over the lead which he converted into another brilliant victory.
Reigning champion Max Verstappen ran second early on as he tried to chase down pole-sitter George Russell. However, with the track drying up quickly, Lando Norris displayed dominant pace which enabled him to overtake Verstappen before going past Russell as well.
The Briton started to build up an ominous advantage, escaping from Verstappen by almost eight seconds within a few laps. However, a Safety Car neutralised Norris’ advantage, and the Briton pitted a lap later during the SC interruption than his rivals. It enabled the Dutchman to emerge in the lead after the restart.
When the field pitted for slick tyres, Verstappen shortly fell behind Norris, but he had enough heat in his slick tyres to retake the lead and hold it until the finish.
“It was a really rewarding victory today, these kind of races are a lot of fun as you don’t know what is going to be thrown at you and I enjoyed racing today. With the weather so bad it was so easy to make a mistake; we had to be really focused as one tiny move off the racing line could result in us going off the track into the wall.
"The Team made all the right calls at the right time and remained really calm. If you look at the last few weekends that we have had in these conditions, we have typically always done well, so that gave me a lot of confidence going into today. We also got quite lucky with the safety car, sometimes it can work for you and sometimes against you but that is racing!
"Once we were on the slick tyres at the end, the car had pretty decent pace and we managed to keep it going until the end. It was a tough weekend but I am really proud to bring home my 60th win," commented Verstappen.
His team-mate Sergio Perez had a weekend to forget. The Mexican failed to make the cut into the middle section of qualifying, and he spent the majority of the race in traffic.
Perez failed to make real progress during the race before a mistake saw him cause race-ending damage to the rear of his car.
“I have lost a lot of momentum recently and I will be working hard in the next couple of weeks to get back to form. I picked up some damage to my front wing on the first lap when Gasly and I touched, which compromised my first stint and lost us some momentum.
"There was only one dry line for most of the race and it was so difficult to pass at times. Later the dry line started to open up and as it did my inters were a little bit too used, then when I went onto the new inter and changed front wing I had good pace but it was still tricky to get by.
"The incident was on me, I touched the wet part into turn six and I couldn’t stop the car, I couldn’t touch the brakes. It has been a very tough couple of weekends, we will regroup, keep our heads down and learn from the weekend.
"We identified a couple of issues after qualifying and they meant we would have qualified a lot higher. Hopefully we can be back to our form in Spain and get back to the level we were at earlier in the season. I am confident in that, there are good tracks coming for us," said Perez.
