Opinion: Vettel hits back in Canada

It wasn’t exactly a great Canadian Grand Prix on Sunday, in fact it was probably the worst Canadian Grand Prix I’ve ever watched. There’s still lots of talking points though.

Sebastian Vettel retook the championship lead after losing it in Azerbaijan. He made it look relatively easy after he retained the lead after the start. On Saturday, his pole position lap was good but it was by no means perfect. He didn’t hit all of his apexes nicely and definitely had a couple of tenths in hand yet it was still enough to take pole. Qualifying was very exciting as the drivers made the final difference.

It’s amazing that three very different teams with a whole range of equipment, people and setups are within a few tenths of each other. It’s hard to say what the speed difference is between Kimi Raikkonen and Lewis Hamilton, for example, who I believe are the worst and best drivers respectively in the top 6. Perhaps Hamilton wasn’t the best in Canada but on average there must be around one-third of a second that a driver can make but it’s really track specific, the luck on the day and about maximising your car’s speed. Maximising your car’s potential will be crucial this season because if you did a bad job as a Mercedes or Ferrari driver, you would be 4th at worst but now you could be 6th. This is a massive difference and can ruin your weekend. We saw Max Verstappen pull out a mega lap after topping all of the practice sessions. I’m sure many people thought that he would slip back to the third row as Mercedes and Ferrari turn up their engines for qualifying.

Verstappen was really on it all weekend after joking that he would “headbutt someone” during the Thursday press conference. He showed yet again that he has a special talent and natural speed which you can’t really teach. It was the first event were Verstappen didn’t have his support team (his manager and his family) at the race but I don’t think this had anything to do with his amazing performance.

Back to the race winner. It was the kind of weekend that we would always saw during his Red Bull days for the 4-time world champion. A very quiet Friday, but then an exceptional Saturday which is backed up with an unbeatable race performance. Vettel deserves the championship lead and should arguably have a bigger lead if it wasn’t for his mistake at Baku which was a potentially 20 point swing in one manoeuvre.

My preview for the race came just a few hours to early because at the time I didn’t know that Mercedes had delayed their new engine until the next race in France. This may have cost them pole position with Valtteri Bottas because the Finn was less than one tenth away from his first pole of the year. In the race, Bottas couldn’t match Vettel and Hamilton suffered from drop outs in power and very high engine temperatures. The reason for not introducing the engine was because it failed on the dyno after 3700KM so Mercedes didn’t want to risk anything by having a proper engine failure in a real race. It was always going to be a damage limitation job for them and it’s why Bottas did a really good job. He got his elbows out at the start with Verstappen which was great to see and did attempt to chase down Vettel. Imagine, if Mercedes did win the race without the upgrade. That would have been an utter disaster for Ferrari and Red Bull and a psychological punch to the face. Luckily for them, Mercedes were beatable but if the reports of around 1 to 1.5 tenths per lap of a gain from the new engine is true then Mercedes still might be favourites.

On a track where Lewis Hamilton has been utterly brilliant, he was beaten by Bottas and never looked comfortable in the car. He was locking up at the hairpin throughout the weekend and seemed to have a bit too much oversteer when getting on the power out of the chicanes. With so much winning experience at the track, finding a good setup should have been easier than usual for Hamilton but he couldn’t find the time that Bottas had and that tells me that the Mercedes is still a bit of a “diva” and the operating window is narrower than the Ferrari and the Red Bulls.

Kimi Raikkonen is still one of the most popular F1 drivers on the grid but I think it’s time to go. He’s had a decent start to the season but it’s weekends like Canada, when the battle at the front is extremely close and the driver makes the difference, were Raikkonen struggles and can’t match Vettel. He isn’t consistent enough and I can’t see Ferrari winning the constructors’ championship with Raikkonen in the car. It’s an unfortunate thing to say because I love Kimi’s personality but he isn’t delivering enough. We know Ferrari want to keep Vettel happy so it wouldn’t surprise me if he stayed for 2019 but I’d much rather see somebody else have a go to see if they have what it takes to be a champion in a top running car.

Could Charles Leclerc take the seat? It seems like the hype is getting higher and higher as time goes on and he did another excellent job. He’s smashing his teammate, Marcus Ericsson, in every session and always delivers when it matters. I said after Azerbaijan can he show any consistency, and he definitely has shown it. If Ferrari see any Hamilton or Verstappen esque potential then Ferrari must put him alongside Vettel as soon as possible, especially if Vettel does decide to leave F1 within the next 2-3 years.

Nico Hulkenberg started 7th and finished 7th with another fantastic weekend. Seven must be his lucky number as he headed the tightly bunched midfield pack. I hope Renault do come good as soon as next year because I’d love to see a Le Mans winner like Hullkenberg not only finally get a podium but even snatch a win if something happens at the front and if he can pull put a performance like he did in Montreal.

The most dramatic part of the race came on the opening lap when Lance Stroll and Brendon Hartley collided which sent Hartley to ride up the wall as the two cars met in the run-off area. It appeared to be Stroll’s fault as he was already on course to hit the wall anyway even if Hartley wasn’t there, because he lost the rear end of his car with cold rear tyres and then instead of hitting the wall, he hit Hartley who had nowhere to go. You could argue that Hartley shouldn’t have gone for an optimistic move around the outside of turn 5 and that a lack of experience led to him getting taken out because nobody else tried the move that he did. It’s unfortunate because Hartley needs a good result and you have to be aware of where your place your car in a racing situation.

Fernando Alonso’s 300th Grand Prix was one to forget. It wasn’t actually an exhaust pipe failure, it was actually a breakage in the pipe that goes into the air cooler. Still, a point or two at best is what would have happened had Alonso not retired. McLaren must do better than because the stop watch doesn’t lie and they have the same engine as Renault and Red Bull and are behind by a fair margin. Canada is probably their worst track but with so much expectation pre-season they’re getting similar results as to what they got with a Honda donkey.

McLaren must be feeling sick at how well Toro Rosso is doing with Honda. It’s really making Red Bull think about whether they should put a Honda engine in the back of their excellent car for 2019. They will have all the data that they need and a decision is expected within the next month or so. The latest rumors area that a deal is ready to be signed for Red Bull and Honda to join up and a possible five year contract is what I’m hearing. We’ll see but I think you can expect an announcement at the Austrian round.

There’s just one week to go until a new round in France at the Paul Ricard circuit. It will be an engine track with quite a lot of medium to high speed corners. Formula 1 will use the chicane down the 1.8KM Mistral Straight to try and help overtaking and I expect the cars to look really good in qualifying. The race might not be exciting if you just look at the track layout but there are so many variables and finding the balance and correct setup of the car might be tough. It will be so easy to go the wrong way in terms of setup and with the return of the thinner tread which we saw in Spain.

We will see this tread in Silverstone as well as Le Castellet and most people seem to think it helped Mercedes a lot in Spain. France will provide us more answers but with Mercedes expected to bring their second engine, it might be that, that can make the difference. Since we’re on the topic of that, it does look like Mercedes may not have to take any engine penalties at all in the season if they can replicate their reliability that they have shown so far this season whereas Red Bull will probably have to do so two or three times and Ferrari will take grid penalties at some point as well. I don’t want to see the championship won on grid penalties but I think it will play a massive part which isn’t what we want to see.

Having three engines also means that we may get more races like Canada were the top 6 cars were just saving their engines and not using it up to save the engine life. I would like to see a return of four engines for next season so that we will see less grid penalties and drivers using their engine harder and for longer periods of time so that they can push.

Finally, it’s time to talk about Pirelli. They said that they’d push for 2 stop races and so far this year, every race has been won (apart from China) with a one stop. This is not good because they can’t even execute what they intend to do. Canada is relatively hard on tyres yet it was an easy 1 stopper on what were meant to be the softest tyres that Pirelli can bring to a race. We will not see the hard or superhard tyres this year which is just stupid. What’s the point of having so many XXXsoft tyres which confuses a lot of people and then not using harder tyre compounds. It’s time to go Pirelli because they aren’t delivering.

So it leaves us with just 1 point in it in the title race. At least the championship is closer!