Hamilton takes victory in Canada

2016 Canadian Grand Prix summary

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Lewis Hamilton took his second consecutive victory of the season in Canada after holding off Sebastian Vettel in a race of strategy.

Vettel had led from the start, but Ferrari opted for an aggressive two-stop strategy which Vettel was unable to convert into the win. Valterri Bottas took Williams’s first podium of the season in third.

As the lights went out, Sebastian Vettel immediately leapt into the lead, flying past the two Mercedes before they had even reached the braking zone.

As Hamilton and Rosberg battled over second into turn one, the two briefly touched, forcing Rosberg to take to the escape road and dropping him all the way down to tenth.

Vettel and Hamilton began to pull away from the chasing Red Bulls of Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo behind.

Jenson Button became the race’s first retirement when his Honda engine failed on the back straight, bringing out the Virtual Safety Car. Ferrari immediately opted to bring both cars in, just as the race went back to green.

Vettel resumed in fourth and began to catch the Red Bulls, passing Ricciardo at the hairpin on lap 18 and then Verstappen on the back straight a lap later.

With Hamilton making his one and only scheduled stop for soft tyres, the fight for the win became a question of whether Vettel could make a two stop strategy work.

Vettel eventually pitted for soft tyres on lap 38, giving him an eight second gap to close in order to challenge Hamilton for the win.

But despite getting within almost four seconds of the Mercedes, Vettel made a number of small braking errors that prevented him from applying serious pressure to Hamilton, who ticked away the laps to take his second victory of the season.

Bottas took third for Williams, half a minute behind. Max Verstappen held on to fourth after a late battle with Rosberg, who almost crashed out at the chicane attempting to pass the Red Bull on the penultimate lap.

Raikkonen took sixth, while Ricciardo finished seventh after an unscheduled pit stop for a flat-spotted tyre.

Nico Hulkenberg took eighth, while Carlos Sainz Jr finished ninth after a strong drive from 20th on the grid. Sergio Perez rounded out the points in tenth for Force India.

2016 Canadian Grand Prix

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Will Wood
Will has been a RaceFans contributor since 2012 during which time he has covered F1 test sessions, launch events and interviewed drivers. He mainly...

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114 comments on “Hamilton takes victory in Canada”

  1. Nice to see the samurai Alonso wanting to give up because Kyvat passed him, awww poor Nando.

    1. Eh he didn’t want to give up he wanted to pit for new tyres so he could have some

      1. Alonso was on very worn tyres so he wanted to stop for a fresh set, not give up.

    2. What are you talking about? Did we see the same race? Why is hate so blind?

    3. That radio message at the end of the race was quite funny TBH, LOL.

  2. Michael Brown (@)
    12th June 2016, 20:45

    Vetted takes the lead, Ferrari gives it back.

    Excellent defending by Verstappen, though.

    1. Michael Brown (@)
      12th June 2016, 20:45

      Vettel* as you know.

    2. Vettel couldn’t have challenged Lewis, he wasn’t fast enough

      1. True. He could have simply stayed ahead though.

      2. I disagree. He was controlling the race before the first pit stop. And, from what we could see with ROS, those Mercedes have troubles following another car.

        1. What about when Rosberg passed other Ferrari of Raikkonen before he had the puncture?

      3. He made two errors and was clearly gaining on Lewis each lap. Not fast enough?

  3. If Rosberg didn’t even get in the top 3 for his drive in Australia, Lewis better not win DOTW for winning in the exact same circumstances today.

    1. Why the anger? Calm down!

    2. But Rosberg didn’t get pole in Australia so the two are completely different.

    3. Hahaha. Lewis showed Nico who the daddy is!

      1. Lewis showed Nico he can get away with punting his team mate off track!

        1. As did Rosberg in Spain. What’s your point?

          1. MG421982 (@)
            13th June 2016, 8:34

            This kind of stuff still being allowed?!? Anyway, it’s worse this time because ROS was 100% side by side… and not just 25%!!!

    4. he’ll probably win DOTW because he was also first on Saturday, but his aggressive driving is getting a bit old. He could have easily avoided the contact with Nico (and would have probably done so if it was any other car) because he had lots of room on the left and the speed they arrived at Turn 1 was not that high to give him so much oversteer. But he chose to smash into Nico.

      1. @gechichan
        “He could have easily avoided the contact with Nico (and would have probably done so if it was any other car) because he had lots of room on the left”

        Ya know, you could apply that same logic to Nico behaviour during the Spanish GP…but I doubt you did…

        1. *Nico’s behaviour

        2. Michael Brown (@)
          12th June 2016, 21:05

          Different circumstances, one was a straight and the other was a corner.

          But I mean pointing out people’s hypocrisy is paramount.

        3. When they both crashed? Yeah, that was Nico’s fault more than Lewis’ because he was caught napping switching engine modes, but you can’t really compare the 2 as Hamilton was not that along-side – he only had the front wing up to Rosberg’s rear tires and theoretically could have braked when saw Rosberg change lines.

          1. @gechichan Technically Lewis was alonside.

            @mbr-9 The stewards didn’t even investigate the case. Rosberg didn’t really complained in the post-race interview. He would have done the same if the positions were reversed.

        4. https://vid.me/eHOS/rosberg-hamilton-canada-2014

          seems like everyone keeps forgetting Canada 2014, same turn. its unbelievable how biased wsome people are.

    5. Or what?

  4. Bravo Lewis bravo. But those starts… Have to sort them out. If Canada had a longer run up to T1 Hamilton would have been 3rd. Something has to change, radically might I add. Ted (Qualy Notebook) said “Nico was able to close the gap to Lewis after studying Hamilton’s data overnight”. Assuming it’s true, Hamilton needs to do the same and see what Nico’s doing to get better starts. Keith if you can confirm please but Hamilton’s clutch issues started last season when apparently Merc changed the hardware and resorted to the old clutch?

    1. Close the gap to Lewis??

      Do me a favour, he was 6/100ths down!! 6/100ths!! And only with one flying lap!

      1. You clearly don’t understand my comment. And you are an established anti Lewis fan so won’t bother trying to even have a reasoned “debate” with you.

      2. That’s about 1 hand

    2. Good points on the clutch. HAM certainly needs to work on those starts, but he is still only marginally worse than ROS, if at all, in this area. It all seems a tad random with Merc as both drivers have reported good getaways on formation laps immediately preceding their worst starts. What is clear is that HAM needs to find a procedure and stick to it. Clearly not all his starts have been poor and he even had arguably the best getaway on the grid in China…

      1. To be fair, I think that in this case, the two Mercs had a less than perfect pre-grid procedure. Because there were people on the grid still you could see Lewis going slow and Rosberg was right behind him. Vettel on the other hand was wheel spinning all the way up the grid as he was further back.

        That must have helped his launch big time.

  5. Arrivabene on the verge of tears. Awaygoesbene, maybe?

    1. It was a bit weird how he wasn’t looking at Ted during the interview.

      1. He look at Ted when he needed to. It didn’t seem he was deliberately not looking at him. Probably has a lot on his mind.

    2. Nah. Looked like he had a cold.

  6. Hamilton should have been penalized for not leaving Nico room.
    Ferrari probably need to stop over thinking things.
    Nico’s reputation (among fans) for not being a racer will continue after that botched overtaking maneuver.
    What the hell happened to Ricciardo after his pit stop to put him so far behind his teammate?

    1. So, if you think Rosberg simply “botched” the overtake, how can you justify punishing Hamilton?

      1. Botched overtaking move on Verstappen.

        1. nico did the same to lewis in 2014.

    2. As Mick as I luikje Rosberg, there simply was no room on the outside. The only way Hamilton could have left room was if he stopped on the track.
      Ricciardo killed his own tires.

    3. Raikkonen happened. Shot the tires trying to get around him (and then Bottas picked up the pieces).
      I think the RB was not so great today, VES managed to hold a mercedes very nicely but ROS was cooling brakes a lot…

    4. Drivers pushing each other off the track is now seen as something which is acceptable. Rosberg did it in the previous race and did not get a penalty, so I don’t think that it would have been right for Hamilton to get a penalty for the same thing today.

      1. That’s what I understand too @ultimateuzair . That’s a step too far for me but as long as the stewards are consistent (thankfully they have been son far) it’s fair.

    5. Should Nico have been punished for Spain “for not leaving enough room”? Especially because his spacial awareness was poor and he was busy fiddling with switches because he was in the wrong engine mode.

      1. Spain is on straight, this one is on first corner on first lap. Totally different thing.

        1. Australia. Same thing from Rosberg to Hamilton.

    6. @velocityboy – No, because its the racing line and the tires are cold. Trying to overtake from outside always have low chance of succeeding unless you can outbrake significantly
      – 2 stop seems better than 1 stop which only Hamilton and Bottas that could made it work today (and probably Rosberg if he don’t get puncture). Ferrari pace is just still slower than Mercedes.
      – Yeah, overtaking on track still looks like his weakest skill.
      – Slow front tires on the stop and stuck in dirty air

    7. Nico pulled the same move on lap 1 in Canada ’14 and that’s why I find it mind-boggling that he wasn’t smart enough to know that the outside move wasn’t going to stick. Nico has no one to blame but himself.

  7. What a happy podium.

    So summary. Lewis pushed Rosberg out of his way to regain firm hold on title chances. Vettel was only able to watch and missed opportunity to challenge Lewis on track. Bottas drove perfectly for 70 laps to score a podium. Red Bulls faltered but Verstapen salvaged fourth place for RBR and showed how good he is at some wheel to wheel driving.

    Performance wise, Ferrari was very good. yet Raikonen was nowhere. Mercedes really struggle when following another car. They also have noticeably lower top speed. We saw how easily due to their standard poor starts, how easily it can all go wrong for them.

    But strategy wise, Mercedes, Williams did well, everyone else kinda struggled.

    And a final note, Alonso is not satisfied saving fuel and waiting for maybe a point.

    1. Have to wonder what’s going on with Kimi. I;m now wondering if he’s going to finish the season at Ferrari.

    2. Raikkonen suffered more traffic than Vettel due to Ferrari’s “amazing” strategy. Still came out in front of Ricciardo, still, but where Vettel dropped to 4th after his 1st stop, Raikkonen fell to 12th. Hard to make up time to the leaders when you have to pass as much as he had to.

      1. Yeah and why he suffered from traffic? Cause he can’t put lap together for better grid spot and when u are 6th or something after lap1 while your team mate is P1 then is hard to make any strategy to avoid traffic.

      2. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Raikkonen didn’t have the new turbo, did he?

  8. petebaldwin (@)
    12th June 2016, 20:59

    The headline should be “Ferrari Hands Victory To Hamilton.” I’m not really sure Hamilton “took” anything other than the comfortable win Ferrari offered to him!

    1. Using that logic, Verstappen didn’t take the Spanish GP win, it was handed to him by Mercedes.

    2. Yes, Hamilton was really slow, drove very bad. I’m being ironic off course.

    3. To be fair Seb made alot of mistakes today so who’s to say Hamilton couldn’t have been handed the victory by Seb instead of the Ferrari pit wall.

    4. Vettel leading Hamilton for barely a sec for 11 laps and he lost the race on strategy!
      No way.
      Would he be able to defend himself when his tyres busted? With 15 laps newer ones he couldn’t catch Hamilton and destroyed the tyres first. With tyres of the same mileage, he would be nowhere.

      1. He was catching LH lap over lap, but made 2 unforced errors. Not sure what you were watching

        1. When you eliminate taffic laps and errors by Vettel, then over each 5 lap block, Vettel was taking on average .5 second out of Hamilton, .1 second a lap was not the pace he needed to make that strategy work, without the mistakes. Whenever the gap got to the low 4 second Hamilton increased pace enough. If you take out around 3 seconds for Vettels mistakes in the 3rd stint, which is what he lost, at the pretty much 8 seconds he was behind on the start of the final lap then Vettel had 5 seconds to make up, taking .1 seconds a lap out of Hamilton on average he would of needed 50 laps to catch up, now lets take 20 laps out of that total for any “special” laps Vettel could of put in, he still had 30 laps to even catch Hamilton. Vettel said it himself, Lewis was just faster today. Ferrari said they though they would be quicker in last stint and Mercedes tyres would go off, which they didn’t.

          Would it of turned out differently if Ferrari hadn’t choose the 2 stop? Who knows, but thats racing and strategy errors from Mercedes side has given race wins to Ferrari in the past. That’s just racing.

          Interesting relationship between Vettel and Hamilton developing in recent races. I think Hamilton, Vettel & maybe Ricciardo battle for 2017 title would be very interesting and exciting to watch.

          1. ” Vettel said it himself, Lewis was just faster today.” – lol, if you value Vet’s post-race comments that much, why first go through almost 30 lines of incomprehensible talk.

  9. Why is Ferrari always going for the harder strategy, where you need to pass on track? Didn’t they know that the softs would last that long? With Vettel in the lead they could have chosen the 1 stop strategy and force Hamilton to do the passing, which even with a long straight and DRS didn’t seem very easy, as proven by ROS against VES.

    1. I agree. With the temps in Montreal, it seemed that the tires would last far longer than usual so why did Ferrari go with what seemed like a standard strategy?

      1. They thought the VSC was going to take longer than it did.

        1. Key truth @sjzelli

      2. The Bermuda triangle and Ferrari strategies are things not even science can explain.

    2. @gechichan In the end 2 stop looks slightly better than 1 stop. Only Hamilton and Bottas that able to do 1 stop. Also Montreal is an easy place to overtake, unless you behind young guy called Verstappen it seems.

      1. 4 more seconds of that VSC period and VET would have been 1st.

        1. Thank you for getting it

  10. Very classy drive by Lewis today. Measured, perfect concentration, tyre care, and fast enough to fend off Seb. Was he the only top driver not to make a mistake? With Bottas perhaps. I think Seb was equally fast, finally, in pace terms, but

    1. +1. Don’t forget Sainz. Made Kvyat look silly.

    2. Was he the only top driver not to make a mistake? – Through english lenses he might quite possibly be.

  11. Ferrari… god almighty, they had the pace, YET AGAIN, and failed to convert to a win…

    1. Michael Brown (@)
      12th June 2016, 21:07

      Makes me wonder if they still have that strategy person from Abu Dhabi 2010.

      1. Nah that guy got fired for that screw up in 2010.

  12. I still can’t make my mind if VES should have let RIC pass. I have reasons against and for. But not letting him pass definitely ruined RIC race.

    1. At most he disturbed RIC a couple laps. He was just unlucky that the mess at turn 2 set him behind VES, and that is racing.

      Still, I read somebody in the live comment on the line of ‘VES outclassing RIC’, come on… I wonder what kind of classing was Monaco then…

      1. But that delay put RIC behind RAI and because of RAI speed on the straight RIC never could pass him.

        1. Correct, but like I say, that is racing. Last race ROS held HAM much more laps, with much worse speed, and still there was debate whether he should or shouldn’t have let HAM pas. To ask VES to move over just because he has been one/two laps in the DRS of RIC is a bit too much.

    2. No. This (IMNSHO) was Verstappen’s best ever race. Better than his win. The defending against Rosberg was awesome.

      1. That defense on ROS was incredible. But letting RIC pass could have put him on the podium.

    3. VES said he was saving fuel and tyres. When the call came about RIC, he sped up and kept RIC out of DRS, so he wasn’t really holding him up.

    4. Arnoud van Houwelingen
      12th June 2016, 21:31

      Not at all .. Ric was only 3 laps faster then VES after that Max Pulled away again because RIC was on the limit and then he pushed too much of his tires. Max has simply better race pace!

    5. “His teammate Max Verstappen placed as high as P4 while Ricciardo admitted that he couldn’t match his pace.”

  13. Mercedes have vast experience of soft tyres in cool conditions from pre-season testing. That enabled them to decide to do the one-stop today.

    1. So bit of Vettel and Hamilton banter after the race.

      Hamilton revealed they were gonna do the opposite of Ferrari. Originally they were gonna do a 2 stop. But the moment Vettel was ahead Lewis was sent to plan B…

  14. Getting so fed up with Hamilton’s dirty tricks. The incident in Suzuka? Justifiable. Austin? Clearly didn’t turn his steering wheel as much as was possbile, so definitely a foul that should’ve been punished. And today? The same dirty trick, repeated for the third time in just 9 months, 4 of which didn’t even have any races …

    Your team mate is making your life difficult? Just catch some ‘understeer’. No-one will blame you.

    This is so *expletive* cynical it’s utterly disgusting.

    1. crying is for babies

      1. Like Lewis on Monaco podium in ’15

    2. I don’t normally respond with un-constructive comments, but I can’t resist this time. Some one is a bit bitter….

    3. Find a handkerchief, mate. Boo hoo!

    4. A very one side view nase, please look at the start of the Australian grand prix 2016 and the move carried out by Rosberg on Hamilton at the Spanish Grand Prix 2016, when he forced Hamilton on to the grass…let’s just say it was not very sporting..

    5. Listen the Rosberg post race interview.. Rosberg said it was racing and you cry about it?

      Just change your name to I hate Lewis ..waah…

    6. Somebody do this man a favour and show him the Canada 2014 start.

  15. Never new it is allowed to take two drivers several seconds in between on the same DRS notification. That was what VET did with RIC and followed in the same DRS setting with VES . Very strange.. if you look you will see he closed the distance with open DRS, several seconds between RIC and VES.

    1. knew

    2. @seth-space You can use the DRS as long as you’ve gained it. If you have pass the car in front before the activation point, you can use it to make a gap to the car behind, or close the gap to the next car in front.

      1. Thanks, good to know.

    3. Vettel didnt know about the DRS until he was very close to the last chicane. You can see in the replays that he opened and shut it down just before it so he realised it late but made full use of it on the main straight

  16. Rosberg proved yet gain he simply cannot drive at level of the top drivers. Verstappen an, 18 year old, showed him how it should be done

  17. Once the stewards ruled that Nico’s move in Spain was legal, there was no closing that push-off-the-track door again…Lewis well within the rules as they are, Nico a bit disrespectful going round the outside at Turn 1, move just wasn’t on, and he paid the price for it.
    Good race for Lewis, but Nico must now be getting that awful slipping-through-my-fingers feeling that should be familiar to him from the last two seasons.
    That Lewis is closing this gap so rapidly despite having serious problems at the start in all the races so far must really gall Nico – what will he do when Lewis gets his starts together??

    1. Slipping-through-my-fingers strictly only applies to 2014 when HAM was hit by more than his fair share of adversity… I hope the championship builds up to the juicy crescendo currently threatening with Ferrari and Red Bull developing apace…

      1. The engine penalties coming Hamilton way should enable to Rosberg to take back some of the points he has lost, considering Hamilton may need 2 new engines that is the opportunity Rosberg needs to take. I’m guessing they may take the first around Monza maybe?

        Hopefully they can limit it only one maybe? As a race fan would prefer the championship is sorted on the track, not unreliability and the penalty system. Very early in the season still though, lots can change, just look from 43 > 9 points in 2 races.

  18. Between Vet fastest and Ros fastest was .7 of a sec.
    How was Vettel ever going to win this race all being equal and I am quite sure if necessary Lewis could have produced a faster lap if needed but lets not forget that he is an absolutely useless driver and just very lucky to be a 3 time WDC. Maybe he gets his luck from the Bermuda Triangle or the Martians.
    On the matter of the first corner bust up he just gave Ros some of his own back.
    Two races back when they crashed out Lewis did NOT block him at all cost on the first corner when Ros passed him, although that honourable gentleman Nikki Lauda said quite clearly that the lead driver could take any line he chose. The operative word being ANY.
    If all drivers took that advise to heart this would not be F1 but F1 Crash and Smash Derby

    Lewis is an excellent driver as is Seb Ric Ves Rai Perez and my 95 year old mother in law on her Tringo
    When all is said and done Lewis is simply incredible and many in the industry know that to be so, many much more knowledgeable than many of us are.

    1. Did you even watch the race man? Ros pitted again and had fresh tyres hence the gap between fastest laps

  19. MG421982 (@)
    13th June 2016, 8:53

    So, is RBR hype over?

    1. The hype was built up over Spain and Monaco. So let us give it another race ….

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