Mercedes fury as car lets Hamilton down again
Team promise inquest after fifth-placed finish Vettel cruises to victory and grabs overall lead
Blind optimism might compel us to describe last night’s Canadian Grand Prix as the perfect plotthickener for this year’s championship, with Sebastian Vettel producing a dominant gun-to-tape victory to edge ahead of arch-rival Lewis Hamilton by a single point.
But Toto Wolff, Mercedes’ perfectionist team principal, offered rather a different view. Maddened by Ferrari’s irresistible pace here in Montreal, the Austrian said: “It is a s--- result for us. I can only put it like that. The only feeling I have is that we have to wake up.”
After a race devoid of any wheelto-wheel skirmishes at the front, it fell to Wolff to provide the fireworks with his words. Since 2014, Mercedes have been unanswerably dominant in F1, and yet the sheer ease with which Vettel swept to his 50th win suggested that the threat from Ferrari had seldom been stronger.
This was not an idea that filled Wolff with joy. Asked if he could draw any comfort from Valtteri Bottas finishing second here, with Hamilton fifth, he shot back: “We have fallen behind in every aspect. This is a track where we should have maximised points. It was not about performing damage limitation.” Pressed on whether the result would have “consequences” back at the team base, he said: “That’s necessary. We will look at that internally.”
Mercedes’ failure to bring any engine updates to Canada hurt them grievously, with Hamilton struggling all weekend both in his cornering and straight-line speed. The effect was severe: where the reigning world champion had arrived at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve with a 14-point lead, he left it trailing by one.
On this occasion, Vettel was supreme in achieving his 50th win. From the moment he surged away from Bottas off the start line, the outcome looked settled.
Traditionally, Canada has hosted many of F1’s finest dramas, from Hamilton’s maiden win in 2007 to Jenson Button’s improbable, rainlashed triumph from last on the grid four years later. This latest instalment was not a contender, alas, to join the classics.
A conspicuous absence of overtaking made for a one-dimensional procession. It was fitting, in a way, that model Winnie Harlow decided to wave the chequered flag a lap early, as if she, like everyone else, had seen quite enough. At least Hamilton put up a fight against the ennui of it all as he tried to chase down Daniel Ricciardo over the final laps. “Do you want us to turn down the engine?” Mercedes asked him, with all the cars stubbornly holding station. “No,” he said, emphatically. “I want to race.”
A race worth the name was what the occasion sorely lacked. As a setting for F1, Montreal brought every ingredient. The action, however, was grimly static. With a third of the season gone, the tussle between Hamilton and Vettel, fierce adversaries throughout last year, could not be more delicately poised. “I’m proud to be a part of the Ferrari story, and this was a great grand prix to win,” Vettel said. A significant one, too, given that he restored his ascendancy in the face-off with Hamilton.
He is seldom too expansive in his post-race emotions, but Vettel was not shy of describing how much the day meant to him. Not only was this his 50th appearance on the top step of the podium, but he made it on the 40th anniversary of the late Gilles Villeneuve’s 1978 triumph. To this day, Villeneuve is the only Canadian to have won his home race. “We showed here that Ferrari were still alive, still racing,” the German said.
While Hamilton was chasing his fourth consecutive win in Montreal, and a seventh overall to equal Michael Schumacher’s record, his struggles were self-evident early as he reported drop-outs of power. It was a weakness that did not go unnoticed by Ricciardo in the Red Bull behind. “Looks like Lewis is vulnerable,” he said via the in-car radio. “Understood, let’s get him,” Simon Rennie, his race engineer, replied.
As it turned out, the Australian did not need to attempt any audacious pass, instead vaulting past Hamilton after the first round of pit-stops as Red Bull pulled off the over-cut. “It’s Hammer Time,” said Pete Bonnington, normally the most soothing voice in the Mercedes garage. “I’m giving it everything I can,” his driver shouted, clearly exasperated.
Further down the order, the drama was more incendiary. Local idol Lance Stroll, of Williams, ran Brendon Hartley into the wall after a flat-out, opening-lap drag race, the New Zealander’s Toro Rosso almost flipping over in an explosion of sparks and carbon-fibre debris.
The timing was inauspicious for Hartley, whose position in F1 has already come under threat, but the blame rested squarely with Stroll, who left the Kiwi nowhere to go. A safety-car deployment ensued, fleetingly halting Vettel’s surge. But he was equally impressive at the restart, leaving Bottas for dead and never relinquishing the momentum thanks to a sequence of lightning laps. In the stands, many Ferrari fans were celebrating.
The Montreal officials, though, went into party mode even sooner, unfurling the chequered flag for Vettel after 69 laps rather than the allotted 70. For such a professionalised sport, it was a bizarrely amateurish mistake, calling a premature end to the grand prix and even depriving Ricciardo of the fastest lap time. Not that Vettel was of much of a mind to complain. The grin on his face told you everything about the magnitude of his win, even if the manner of it left much to be desired.