Canadian GP weekend unwinds with surprising twists
MONTREAL— On a warm but cloudy Friday at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve, where Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Raikkonen took turns setting blisteringly-fast practice lap times in preparation for Sunday’s 50th anniversary Grand Prix du Canada, Mercedes racing chief Toto Wolff dropped something of a bombshell.
During a breakfast meeting with Canadian reporters — an annual event held on the first morning of the three-day race weekend — Wolff suggested that Formula One champion Nico Rosberg, who retired late last year literally minutes after winning the title, might soon be back in an F1 car. But not with Mercedes.
Ferrari, perhaps. Or possibly another team.
Said Wolff, an Austrian-born businessman who usually serves up a story or two along with the yogurt and berries: “I wouldn’t be surprised if Nico changed his mind in a year and reappears in a Ferrari, or somewhere else. The same way he retired, he might decide to come back.
“He can only go with us or Ferrari to be competitive. He hasn’t talked to us yet.” Later, the executive director of Mercedes F1 qualified it slightly, adding in a much lower voice, “or somewhere else.”
Meanwhile, Mercedes driver Hamilton, a three-time series champion who lost his title to Rosberg last season and is 25 points behind points leader Sebastian Vettel this year, just edged out his Ferrari rival in the first 90-minute session Friday morning.
Valtteri Bottas (Mercedes) was third-fastest, Raikkonen fourth and Sergio Perez fifth in a Force-India. Canadian Lance Stroll was 13th-fastest in a Williams.
Friday afternoon, Vettel’s teammate, Raikkonen, set the fastest time around the 4.361-kilometre course on the Ile Notre-Dame, followed closely by Hamilton, Vettel, Bottas and Max Verstappen in a Red Bull. Stroll finished the second practice session in 17th place out of 20 drivers who will start the race.
There were the usual spins and offroad excursions as drivers tried to find the limit. But there was little property damage and no one was hurt —although a marshal took quite a tumble while trying to help move a Red Bull car that stalled on the course in the afternoon.
Fernando Alonso, back for his first Grand Prix after skipping the one in Monaco in favour of racing in the Indianapolis 500, pulled out of the pits in the morning and went half a lap before his Honda engine expired yet again. He was not pleased when he exited the cockpit, literally throwing his horse collar away. Although he improved to seventh-fastest in the afternoon, the damage was done.
To watch the frustrations of one of the world’s great drivers acted out in such a manner makes you wonder who will call whom first — Alonso or his IndyCar boss, Michael Andretti? Alonso said at a media conference Thursday that if his McLaren team doesn’t start winning and soon, he has options. You can bet IndyCar is one of them.
To say the practice speeds were blisteringly quick would be an understatement. Raikkonen put down a lap of1:12.935 (215.254 km/h) in the second practice.
Last year’s fastest was 1:12:812, by Hamilton, who’s won the Canadian Grand Prix five times.
Hamilton won his first GP, period, here in 2007 and is looking to break out of a bit of a slump. Although he’s won two races this season, he had a dismal outing at the last one in Monaco and finished off the podium.
It’s no secret that if he’s going to catch Vettel, he has to get cracking and Canada would be a good place to start.
As for Stroll, the 18-year-old firstyear Williams driver from Montreal, was pushing during both practice sessions — but not really. The team suggested strongly that he not try to set the world on fire and instead focus on ending the day with his race car intact, something that has been a problem several times this season when he’s crashed.
But eyebrows were raised Friday when he didn’t even come close to cracking the top 10, particularly after Williams teammate Felipe Massa was eighth in the first practice and sixth after lunch. You can set a good time around Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve without crashing — if you mind your Ps and Qs.
Wolff, however, remains a fan. He said at this race a year ago that Stroll would make the jump to F1 in 2017 and compared his level of maturity to that of another teenager, Verstappen, in a way that suggested Max needed to grow up. Friday, he said he thinks Stroll deserves much more credit than he has been given.
“Lance has won every championship he’s entered,” Wolff said. “He’s ticked off all the dots that you would expect from a young driver. And he has come into the sport at a time when the cars are more difficult to drive against the more experienced drivers. I consider (McLaren driver) Stoffel Vandoorne to be one of the superstars of the future and yet he can’t compete with Fernando (Alonso, his teammate).
“Because we live in the world that we do, Lance has been given a very hard time in the press and it’s not justifiable. We need to give him time. He’s an intelligent boy who has proven he can drive cars fast, and let’s see where we are when we meet again in 12 months.”
There will be one more practice Saturday morning before a one-hour knockout qualifying session to set the race grid. The 50th anniversary Grand Prix du Canada will go to the post Sunday at 2 p.m. (TV: TSN).