Canadian GP lets Hamilton turn his fortunes around
Grand Prix weekend served as welcome turnaround for three-time world champion racer
Three-time world champion Lewis Hamilton has many great memories to look back upon in his career and the 2017 Canadian Grand Prix weekend is one of them.
He tied legend Ayrton Senna for pole positions with 65 on Saturday, which saw the Mercedes driver presented with one of his boyhood hero’s helmets courtesy of the late driver’s family. A day later, he cruised to an easy victory in Montreal and back into the thick of the 2017 championship fight.
“I actually loved it the whole way today and I hope that I get more experiences like that here,” Hamilton said after his third consecutive win and sixth in total at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, which puts him only one behind the record held by Michael Schumacher.
“It’s crazy to think that I had my first pole position and grand prix win here 10 years ago. It felt very reminiscent of 2007.
The win was never really in doubt for the Englishman, who led all 70 laps and easily built a wide gap over Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas before cruising the rest of the way. The margin of victory was 19.783 seconds. Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo was third.
Unfortunately, the fans who packed the grandstands expecting a spirited battle between Hamilton and points leader Sebastian Vettel of Ferrari watched their hopes evaporate in the first corner.
Vettel started on the front row, but his chances disappeared seconds into Sunday’s Canadian Grand Prix when an aggressive move by Red Bull’s Max Verstappen off the start line ended with the Ferrari driver nursing a broken front wing.
A pit stop for a new nose cone and tires dropped the four-time world champion into dead last and damage control mode. He climbed back to fourth by the checkered flag and managed to collect a valuable 12 points. Vettel heads into the next race in Baku, Azerbaijan, 13 points ahead of Hamilton. Drivers get 25 points for a win.
As the Ferrari driver struggled to salvage his race, Canada served as a welcome turnaround for Hamilton, who looked lost on the streets of Monaco two weeks ago where he qualified 14th and finished seventh while Vettel streaked away to victory.
“To have come away from Monaco, really, everyone scratching their heads and wanting to work and pull together, and we did,” Hamilton said.
“I’ve not seen the team pull so well together and work towards the same cause, to understand the car and come here and deliver what we delivered: A great blow to Ferrari.”
Hamilton was so comfortable in the cockpit that he even took time to offer Montreal teenager Lance Stroll some kudos on his polite driving. The three time world champion displayed a hearty thumbs up to the rookie after the Williams driver pulled well off the racing line to give Hamilton plenty of room to lap him late in the race.
Outside the cockpit, Hamilton appears more relaxed and happy after the cessation of hostilities within the team caused by his constant title battle with former teammate Nico Rosberg during the past three seasons. The pair engaged in infamous squabbles on and off the track in a relationship that made Mercedes boss Toto Wolff quip that his drivers didn’t act like school boys but were instead “kindergartners.” Rosberg retired after winning the 2016 world championship and was replaced by Bottas.
With that competitive aggression now channelled outside the team and toward the Ferrari team and its lead driver Vettel, Hamilton appears to be a different man, laughing and joking with his teammate in news conferences rather than avoiding eye contact and sniping, as happened many times with Rosberg.
It all has Hamilton at the top of his game, something that should have the rest of the field worried.
“It’s crazy to think after 10 years I enjoy driving every single lap just as much as I did when I was 22 years old,” he said.
“Each weekend, you want to arrive as a more solid and complete driver — I would like to hope that being that I am older and more experienced, I would like to think that I am a lot more composed and complete as a driver, so in terms of performance I like to think it was one of the best weekends ever.”