Canadian GP gets another high rating

2012 Canadian Grand Prix Rate the Race results

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2012 saw its seventh winner in as many races as Lewis Hamilton battled to victory in Canada.

A more aggressive strategy than his rivals meant the McLaren driver had to overtake Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso to take his first win of the season.

The race was rated 8.197, the fourth-highest race of the season so far.

The result means that of the 80 races that have taken place since the beginning of 2008, the four Canadian Grands Prix (there was no race in 2009) have all ranked inside the top 22.

Whereas the four races at the next venue on the schedule, Valencia, all feature in the bottom 15.

Here’s what F1 Fanatic readers had to say about this year’s Canadian Grand Prix:

Really happy for Lewis. Well overdue. Was also really exciting to see whether Vettel and Alonso would fall off the cliff.

Remarkable that Vettel could pit and pass Alonso within so few laps! Really pleased also for Grosjean and Perez.
3dom

In a season centred on tyres, some were pleased to see the aggressive option triumph:

Hamilton was superb, despite more pit mistakes from the team – at least they had a smart strategy. Good to see aggressive strategy and driving win out.
Marcusbreese

The one subject that continues to provoke even more discussion than tyres is DRS.

For the Canadian race the FIA cut last year’s two DRS zones to one and reduced the remaining zone in length. Even so, many readers were unhappy at how easy it made overtaking:

Instead of overtaking happening all over the place, drivers know they can wait to use DRS and pass without much effort. Hamilton would have got past Alonso and Vettel anyway, but that’s exactly the point.

Without DRS he would have had to work a little bit harder and pull off his manoeuvres somewhere unexpected, which would have made it all the more exciting to watch.
Estesark

I would have preferred to see Hamilton really have to fight his way past Vettel and Alonso.

Watching him take the lead really easily just by pushing a button takes away a lot of joy from seeing my favourite driver win today.
PeteF12012

Nick.UK suggested that the DRS only seemed excessive when combined with the effect of the tyres:

I think the tyres were what made Lewis’s return to the front particularly easy. Alonso and Vettel just had no traction out of the hairpin.

Hamilton was more or less alongside Alonso before the DRS flap opened anyway.
Nick.UK

MajorDanby put the debate into an historical perspective:

I understand to some degree the comments regarding DRS, especially when drivers are playing cat and mouse on the approach to the activation zone.

However, I would have to say that times when driver aids such as traction control, launch control and reactive ride heights were common were truly artificial.
MajorDanby

But JerseyF1 was among many who found the race thoroughly entertaining:

It wasn’t just exciting in the final laps, the whole race was shaping up for that grandstand finish with Perez looking good from fairly early on.

Hamilton, Vettel and Alonso all had huge grins on their faces at the end, they clearly enjoyed the race and so did I.
JerseyF1

What did you think of the Canadian Grand Prix? Have your say in the comments.

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2012 Canadian Grand Prix

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    14 comments on “Canadian GP gets another high rating”

    1. I wonder if the rating would be so high if Ferrari and Red bull had it right and pitted Fernado and Sebastein right after Lewis. Hamiltons race pace was better so he would be comfortably 1st so Romain and Sergio wouldn’t come from the back to challenge for the podium. Thus, the teams above are “making” this season a great view for the fans courtesy of pirelli.

      1. If Ferrari and Red Bull had pitted, then Hamilton would have won easily. But the fight between Romain, Sergio, Vettel and Alonso for 2nd and third would have been exciting as well. Because, we know for sure that Romain and Sergio would not have pitted for a second time. Romain was managing his tyres very well, and Sergio was on an alternate strategy anyways.

        No matter what strategy, I think the Canadian Grand Prix was going to be thrilling.

        1. I don’t agree. If they (Vet, Alon) had pitted they would be miles ahead of Romain and Perez. If you see again the race you will understand what i am talking about. It would be a boring end to a boring race, I am sure. The only excitment that afternoon was when Felipe spun!

          1. When Lewis emerged out of pits, he was 1-2 seconds ahead of Romain. Not miles ahead.

            So by that logic, when Alonso & Vettel would have emerged out of pits, they would have been near to Romain, most likely behind him.

            1. yeah but on brand new tyres! roman was only 1 stopping dont forget. ALO and VET would have passed him around lap 50-60 or so when romans tyres were getting older.

        2. Had Alonso pitted the lap right after Hamilton’s stop, he would have taken the lead. Fernando was 14.8 seconds ahead of Lewis after his stop, a normal pit would have taken about 14 seconds, and knowing the Ferrari pit-crew you can easily take one more second off that.

        3. I am not sure if sumedh is right or @kingshark here, but I think its safe to say that had they decided to pit it would have offered far less potential to be great.

          Or would Hamilton have been able to challenge Alonso for the lead? Making a DRS pass.

      2. @babis1980

        Actually if Vettel had pitted at the same time as Hamilton he would have come out a couple of seconds behind Grosjean – you can see this from the race chart:

        2012 Canadian Grand Prix lap charts

        From there the question arises whether Vettel might have caught and passed the Lotus.

        What we do know is that in the last six laps Vettel only took 2.5 seconds out of Perez despite setting the fastest lap of the race, so I’d say it’s far from being a foregone conclusion he could have recovered to the podium.

        The expectation that pitting Vettel would have left him behind Grosjean almost certainly influenced Red Bull’s strategy.

    2. I find it odd that the 2008 Canadian Gp got such a low rating – Kubica’s 1st win mixed with the Lewis-Kimi incident and a charging Alonso who crashed out. It was definitely more exciting than both the 2010 and 2012 Canadian GPs IMO.

      1. Did you watch the 2010 Canadian GP? Yeah, the race in 2008 was pretty good, but still; Kubica was unchallenged after the Kimi-Lewis collision and BMW even used team orders that prevented Heidfeld from getting his first win, which he always deserved. Canada 2010 was just lights to flag action in a five-way tussle for the win.

        1. Well said @kingshark, that’s also how I remember it.

      2. @todfod I’m not surprised that two races with close, competitive fights for the win were rated higher than one that was chiefly remarkable for having a new winner (aided, it must be said, by his team mate conspicuously not fighting him) and a silly crash in the pits.

    3. Personally I didn’t rate the race that highly due to too much DRS’ing and too much discrepancy between car speeds due to the tires, but I did enjoy NR’s non-DRS passes. And yeah it was fun to watch LH hunt down SV and FA but that I find was tainted by his blatant speed advantage due to the tires and the relative easy with which he passed. Overall I would take any underwhelming F1 race (my opinion of course) to no race at all any day of the week. I always enjoy most things about an F1 weekend including the hope leading up to the start of the GP that it will be amazing. The potential is always there and that is usually good enough for me.

      1. oop…’the relative ease…’ not ‘easy’.

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