What can you say about Lewis Hamilton’s performance in Canada? Perfect. It was an absolutely devastating qualifying lap, probably one of the best laps I’ve seen from him for his 65th pole position and with a lot of emotions with the Senna story. I really thought it was a lap befitting of anyone who is going to equal the record of someone like Senna.
His commitment through the final chicane in particular was pretty stellar, but the whole lap looked so hooked up. In Q1 and Q2 it looked nip and tuck between Ferrari and him but that first run in Q3 was such a big jump ahead. To be seven-tenths ahead of your team-mate on one of the shortest laps is just a superlative performance.
In the race he made the start and was just gone. I think I saw Lewis three times throughout the race. He was just so far gone.
For Valtteri, I think there are questions to be answered from his side. Finishing nearly 20sec behind, one race after blitzing him in Monaco, that is a hell of a comeback from Hamilton. It just shows why he and Vettel will be fighting all the way to Abu Dhabi for the title.
The start was just a nightmare for Ferrari and on the first lap it all fell apart. Seb damaged his front wing, Kimi lost track position by going onto the grass and nearly into the wall. Then he got into this battle with the Force Indias; it was just a messy opening few laps. In Montreal, straightline speed is of paramount importance — if you haven’t got the speed you can’t overtake. It doesn’t matter how fast you are through the rest of the lap. We saw that against the Force Indias, Kimi was stuck there so they changed tyres. Without that straightline pace, Sebastian, late on, showed why you have be risky.
Ferrari will be disappointed, certainly after Friday when they looked to have the fastest car. Saturday looked very close in FP3 but they weren’t quite there in qualifying. They would have fancied their chances and although Sebastian did a good job to recover from 18th to fourth at the end, it’ll still hurt their championship chances. We go to Azerbaijan in two weeks where you have big straights, tricky braking zones and 90deg corners. We’ll have to see how it unfolds.
That was an amazing race for Force India. There was drama around team orders between Ocon and Perez. It’s a tricky dynamic there, you have to bear in mind that Sergio brings a lot of sponsorship to the team, so it’s difficult to dictate terms to him. I’ve known ‘Checo’ for a decade, I was his driver coach in F3 in ’07/08, he’s a great guy, but a hard competitor. I knew from the first radio call he was not going to do it — he’s not that type of guy. I think he’s right, you wouldn’t have seen Senna move over, Lewis, Seb, Michael Schumacher; they don’t give any quarter. You’re fighting for your position in the team, ultimately it cost them because it allowed Seb to get ahead of both cars and possibly allowed Ricciardo to break away. As an individual it’s quite a hard call to make and for Force India it’s hard to force the issue with someone who brings funding to the team.
I thought Ocon drove a great race to finish two-tenths behind ‘Checo’. That’s so close. He’s a rookie who carries on to be the outstanding rookie of the year, compared with Vandoorne and Stroll and Palmer to a certain extent. Clearly Ocon and Max Verstappen have shown to be the best talents to arrive in Formula One in recent times.
Stroll drove a very good race, getting his first points in ninth. He was feisty, didn’t have a great qualifying but picked his way through the drama on the opening lap and got himself into a good position. He made some good moves but was also patient. When the moves weren’t there to be had he backed out of it, which shows good judgment and maturity. Now he needs to start getting within two or three tenths in qualifying to Massa, not seven or eight.
Fernando — best of the rest again
Hülkenberg was in the points again, a good result for him and Renault, and Haas snuck in the points. What can you say about Fernando? Again, another engine. His brilliance came forward though: judging his pace on what Ferrari is doing — he’s looking at it thinking ‘the Ferrari in front isn’t pulling away, the one behind not catching, so the supersoft might not be working, so let’s try the soft’.
He has such a brilliant way of handling the race and reading how it unfolds. He could be a strategist, really. It is amazing how he can do that and it shows the car really isn’t befitting a man of his talent.
It sounds more and more likely that McLaren and Honda are heading for a divorce and there will be a Mercedes in the back of it, one way or another. It think it’s sad Honda hasn’t achieved what it set out to but for the sake of F1 we want to see McLaren and Fernando fighting at the front.
That start and opening few corners were stellar for Verstappen, he really deserved a result. He was holding his own against Bottas and, I think Bottas would have had a tough challenge to get ahead of Max. I felt sorry for Max, he deserved a podium this weekend as he looked stronger than Daniel right from Friday morning.
I have a big week ahead of me, racing here at the Le Mans 24 Hours which is the biggest race of the year for me. The F1 circus reconvenes in Azerbaijan in two weeks time for the next instalment of Ferrari vs Mercedes. Lewis had a terrible time there last year but that will give him extra motivation to fight for the win!
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