Position of strength
Pole-sitter Vettel looks to end Ferrari’s Montreal drought
Ferrari’s home base is in Maranello, Italy, but Montreal must also feel like home to the Formula One team.
After Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel won the pole position Saturday for Sunday’s Canadian Grand Prix, there was a roar from the stands at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve that sounded like one at the Bell Centre after the Canadiens score a goal.
That’s if Canadiens fans still remember what that sounds like.
Vettel won the pole position with a course-record time of one minute, 10.776 seconds around the 4.361-kilometre Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, thrilling the Ferrari fanatics — the vast majority of whom can only dream about owning one of the company’s fancy sports cars. Valtteri Bottas of Mercedes was second, followed by Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes and Kimi Raikkonen in the second Ferrari.
A Ferrari hasn’t won the Canadian Grand Prix since Michael Schumacher took his third straight checkered flag at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in 2004 — which is nothing compared with the 25th anniversary of the Canadiens’ last Stanley Cup victory that was also celebrated on Saturday. Vettel won the Canadian Grand Prix in 2013 when he was with Red Bull. No Ferrari has been on the pole position at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve since 2001 when Schumacher finished first in qualifying.
“Well, it was a long time ago,” Vettel said about Schumacher taking the pole position. “I said earlier that the meaning for Scuderia Ferrari in this country is huge with the history. Gilles Villeneuve, the favourite driver of Enzo Ferrari and I think his charisma, his character that he brought to Formula One, to racing in general, is still alive today. You can see there’s a lot of flags. He left the heritage, so the people who fell in love with motor sport back then, it’s still them hanging around and their kids and maybe grandchildren by now, I don’t know. Yeah, so really, really happy and it’s an important day for us but, for sure, Saturday is not as important as Sunday so we hope to do well tomorrow as well.”
With Italy failing to qualify for soccer’s World Cup, Ferrari is about the only thing Italian sports fans around the world have to cheer about this summer. Coincidentally, Italian soccer stars Leonardo Bonucci and Giorgio Chiellini were guests in the Ferrari paddock on Saturday.
During a media event Thursday at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, Vettel was asked what his favourite moment is from racing in Montreal.
“Obviously, the win is something special, always,” said the driver who won four F1 world driving championships with Red Bull before joining Ferrari in 2015. “I had a lot of races where, for some reason, I was a bit further back and had to come back. So I’ve had a lot of fun here. Overtaking is always difficult. I think I’ve had interesting races here, very entertaining races, fun races.
“It’s a nice place,” he added. “There’s always a lot of people. In general, I like coming here.”
There’s no shortage of Montrealers who like getting dressed up in Ferrari red during F1 weekend whether they’re at the track or walking the streets downtown, maybe even pretending to be part of the team. The Scuderia Ferrari Club of Montreal was the first fan club in North America sanctioned by Ferrari headquarters in Maranello.
Vettel said Thursday that his favourite track on the F1 circuit is Suzuka, Japan, but he also enjoys Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.
“I really like coming here,” Vettel said. “There’s a lot of straights, so it’s difficult to find the right setup. But the nature of the track, a lot of chicanes, the walls close in some crucial places — mostly exit of the chicanes. It makes it spicy, but interesting because it’s very easy to do a mistake. You use a lot of curbs, so the car is jumping up and down. You feel alive when going around here. It’s got a nice rhythm. I like it.”
F1 teams are only allowed to use three engines to get through the 21-race schedule and Vettel is using his second this weekend in his Ferrari, which he has named Loria. Vettel comes up with a new name for his car each year.
“For this weekend, we have a new power unit so there’s a lot of preparation that’s been going into this race from the team side,” Vettel said. “From my side, physically it’s not the toughest track, which is nice because there’s quite a lot of straights so we can have a little breather and a bit of a rest. But it’s very challenging mentally. There’s not much room for errors here. You’ve got the walls very close.”
Hamilton, who will be seeking his fourth straight Canadian Grand Prix win, leads the F1 drivers’ standings with 110 points, 14 ahead of second-place Vettel. Hamilton’s Mercedes team leads the constructors’ standings with 178 points, followed by Ferrari with 156 and Red Bull with 107.
When asked Thursday to describe his season so far, Vettel used the word “interesting.” After winning the first two races in Australia and Bahrain, Vettel finished eighth in China, fourth in Azerbaijan, fourth in Spain and second in Monaco.
“We had ups, but we also had some downs,” he said.
“We could have had more wins but, yeah, it didn’t happen for various reasons. I think overall it’s been very exciting. You’ve got the top three teams very close to each other and it’s difficult to predict on Sunday what’s going to happen.”