Here are our conclusions from Montreal:
Verstappen looks unstoppable in the 2022 title race
🔥 ᴀ ʀᴀᴄᴇ 🔥 It was difficult with the strategy because of the safety cars, but luckily we were able to make it work in the end @redbullracing 🙌 pic.twitter.com/ijmPh9iI60 – Max Verstappen (@ Max33Verstappen) June 19, 2022 There was almost never any doubt from the moment Charles Leclerc’s penalty was confirmed on Friday. Until suddenly, with a Ferrari just behind him with fresher tires behind the safety car, it was highly questionable. But if Verstappen did not completely annoy Lewis Hamilton who breathed his last in Austin last year, it was unlikely that he would be bothered by the sight of Sainz in his mirrors and confront him with the apparent immunity to the pressure that has become the man’s mark. . With six wins in nine games, Verstappen’s 2022 has more and more of the air of Hamilton’s 2015 or Sebastian Vettel’s 2011 – let’s call it The Year After The Year – when the calm and confidence that comes with winning together of a tough world championship take both team and driver to a whole new level of performance. Forty-six points ahead of team-mate Sergio Perez, Verstappen now leads the leaders’ standings by exactly one point behind Charles Leclerc after the first three laps, underscoring the speed with which the title race is recovering. If Ferrari have been their worst enemy in recent weeks, Perez’s suspected DNF gearbox after seven laps in Canada has served as a reminder that there is also an underlying fragility for Red Bull, which has faced major and minor car problems from the beginning. of the season. At this point, unreliability is the only hope left for the rest to catch Verstappen, whose five wins in the last six games – each easier than the last – have the undeniable smell of dominance.
Sainz may not have a better chance of winning in 2022
Having overcome his crisis at the beginning of the season, Sainz is getting closer to his maiden victory in the Grand Prix in recent weeks. Only when he was stuck behind a spinning car, he felt, prevented him from winning in Monaco, where his instinctive intelligence to shape his own cockpit strategy led him to avoid falling into the same trap as his teammate Leclerc. With Leclerc serving a penalty on the grid, Sainz was once Ferrari’s main target in Montreal, but despite his preference in the wet conditions in which he always thrived, Sainz was a distant third, eight tenths away. the pole position and behind Fernando Alonso’s Alpine. It was, in short, the kind of vacuum in which Leclerc would fit nicely into a regular weekend. Sainz was on his way to a regular P2 run in the race until the recent Safety Car offered the opportunity for much more, giving him a free stop and the opportunity to start right behind Verstappen with six cooler tires. He tried – the Lord knows he tried – but not once in the other rounds did he create a serious attack on the lead. Again, you wonder, if Leclerc was in that position, would he have found a way to get past Verstappen? Sainz won the applause – not only from Ferrari engineers, but also from those of Red Bull – as he got out of his car at the parc ferme, the second for the fifth time since September 2020 and for the third time this season . After another near failure, he will feel that his first victory is just around the corner. But equally, with his teammate out of contention and circumstances moving in his favor slowly in the match, he may not have a better chance than that.
Reports of Lewis Hamilton’s death are exaggerated
Lewis Hamilton: “Obviously it’s different from a win, but I think I feel so good in a way. “I’ve had a quarter and a third and a little consistency is finally coming back, so I’m definitely grateful and I know we can do better and I can do more.” # CanadianGP 🇨🇦 # F1 pic.twitter. com / aPP6XaIY89 – PlanetF1 (@ Planet_F1) June 19, 2022 Another little look at how tiring the 2022 season was for Hamilton came at the end of FP2 on Friday afternoon. “This car is so bad,” he murmured honestly as he waited for his interview to begin at the end of the day, before continuing to repeat the line first said at the April Australian GP that Mercedes has nothing to do with misery. W13. distinct difference. He seemed almost lost as he hinted that the limitations of his car – which he described as “unobtrusive” via group radio – had damaged his enjoyment of the Montreal circuit, where he so memorable won his first of 103 Grand Prix victories. 2007. But the night is darker just before dawn and, on Sunday afternoon, his mood had changed completely. Hamilton sounded much more excited after winning the P4 – his highest grid of the year – in the rainy conditions of the qualifiers, likening his emotions to the stunning joy of his debut season. And when he turned his place on the grid to the first podium after the Bahrain GP that opened the season, as it was the fastest car on the track for a while before the recent Safety Car season, he admitted that he felt a little shocked. “It was such a difficult year for me personally in terms of the car,” Hamilton said after the race. Qualifying was emotional for me and back in the garage we were like ‘wow, this is beautiful for us’. “Then having a strong fight gives me so much hope and confidence for the future.” Just in time for his Silverstone home game next time…
Magnussen’s naturally combative approach costs Haas
A Sad Steiner About What Could Be In #CanadianGP # HaasF1 pic.twitter.com/RpJD63l0ir – Haas F1 Team (@ HaasF1Team) June 19, 2022 After scoring in three of the first four games of 2022, Haas found points a little harder to achieve in recent weeks. And with the team admitting to Canada that its only significant upgrade of the season is likely to be delayed until the Hungarian GP at the end of July, it is unclear how many more opportunities they will have to add to their tally. That’s why the team was so excited about their qualifying performance, as both Haas cars lined up in the top six of the grid for the first time in almost four years. The natural touch and feel of a racing car that lifted Kevin Magnussen to fourth place in the sprint at Imola was good enough for the P5 in similar humidity conditions in qualifying in Canada, with teammate Mick Schumacher in third place. There has been a lot to admire about Magnussen since his unexpected return to F1 in March, but there have also been indications that he occasionally led team boss Guenther Steiner to despair during his initial spell with the team. Magnussen lost his last place in the top-10 when an occasional move outside of Hamilton went wrong in the first round in Barcelona, condemning him to a miserable fight that ended in two laps lower. Once again he was next to Hamilton in the opening round in Canada and once again it came out worse, damage to the end plate of his front wing resulting in a black and white flag and finish in last place. Was there a moment, as they approached the chic of turns 3 and 4, when Magnussen could have retired from the traffic and got behind a car that was unlikely to win throughout the race? His aggressive, aggressive and uncompromising approach has won Magnussen many fans and few enemies over the years. But at a time when his team needs all the points it can get, its natural urge to be militant at its borders to be irresponsible.
Zhou could not have wished for a better mentor than Bottas
While Magnussen is struggling to lead Haas to normal points, the opposite is true of Valtteri Bottas who has scored in all but two games so far this season. Bottas is used to recovering well from the break-ups in 2022, with the Safety Car coming at the right time to execute a one-stop strategy and finish seventh in Canada, but for the second straight weekend it has outpaced the qualifiers. his teammate. If Bottas solves his problems early this season, Zhou Guanyu has suffered the brunt of Alfa Romeo’s unreliable racing condition, having retired from three of the previous four Grand Prix. His failure to add to the only point he scored in his F1 debut in Bahrain has undoubtedly obscured Zhou’s quiet progress, with the Chinese driver having his most comprehensive performance to date in Montreal where he finished in the P8 after reaching the P8. Q3 for the first time. in the wet. Zhou claimed that Bottas’s influence was “definitely the key” to his post-qualification development, revealing that the former Mercedes driver “has been very useful so far this season”. Bottas, for his part, was “really happy” for Zhou at the end of the match, adding: “I think my team-mate can get a lot of confidence from this weekend and I’m sure we go on now we can be closely matched and to get a few more points together “. Maybe we are witnessing the flourishing of another F1 bromance in Alfa?
