A VERY exciting Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal produced a worthy winner in Daniel Ricciardo at the young age of 24 (he turns 25 on July 1).This is the lucky break he deserves for he has really been knocking at the door ever since he moved over from the Torro Rosso team to Red Bull alongside Sebastian Vettel. Ricciardo is a real talent who is keeping Vettel very much on his toes.
It was a race of changing fortunes which started with pole man, Nico Rosberg, leading from the start but with Lewis Hamilton making a really big effort to get past him before the first corner. This misfired and instead Vettel got past Hamilton and it took a while for Hamilton to regain second place.
The game was on between the two Mercedes teammates as they drew away from the rest of the pack for the first half of the race. Then, all of a sudden, drama for the Silver Arrows as one car after the other experienced a loss of power, which turned out to be MGU-K problem, in other words no KERS or electric power from the batteries, a loss of 160 horsepower.
If this wasn’t enough, Hamilton later developed brake problems overshooting the hairpin and nearly losing it at various corners. He had to bring the car into the pits to retire, while Rosberg soldiered on with his wounded Merc.
He was caught by the one-stopping Sergio Perez in the Force India and by Ricciardo and Vettel’s Red Bull which were joined by a hard charging Felipe Massa. It looked as though we were in for a really exciting finish. With only two laps to go, Ricciardo swept past Rosberg into the lead with Vettel not too far behind.
Meanwhile Massa lined up to pass Perez at turn one under braking and hit into Perez while still travelling very quickly. The two cars flew off into the barriers and both drivers were lucky to walk away from a nasty accident. After the race Perez was found to be at fault having changed his line and will drop five grid places at the next race for his misdemeanour. Rosberg who finished second was joined on the podium by Vettel in third position.
Behind the race for the podium and after Massa and Perez had lost out for potentially fourth and fifth, it was Jenson Button who benefited from the chaos. He drove an excellent race coming up from ninth on the grid to fourth at the finish and must encourage McLaren in its bid to make their car the front runner again.
Nico Hulkenberg also did a great job bringing his car from 11th on the grid up to fifth at the finish, earning good points yet again for Force India. Fernando Alonso did his usual good job at Ferrari to bring his prancing horse home in sixth position. He and Kimi Raikkonen had been line astern but unfortunately Kimi fell back to 10th at the end and Ferrari still have work to do to get on terms with the front runners. The Tifosi will not forgive them if they can’t get it right before Monza in September.
Veltteri Bottas, as well as teammate Massa, had been giving a tremendous performance all weekend and were also racing together for much of the race. Bottas should have finished higher up and Massa was taken out after the cars were fourth and fifth on the grid!
The another notable performer was Jean Eric Vergne in the Torro Rosso who consistently produced eighth on the grid and eighth place at the finish from a small budget team and a car which is performing well at the moment.
Next race is back to Austria after a long time gap since we had a Grand Prix there. The race will be held on Sunday, June 22.
Qualifying: 1 Nico Rosberg; 2 Lewis Hamilton; 3 Daniel Ricciardo; 4 Valtteri Bottas; 5 Felipe Masa; 6 Daniel Ricciardo; 7 Fernando Alonso; 8 Jean Eric Vergne; 9 Jenson Button; 10 Kimi Raikkonen.
Race: 1 Daniel Ricciardo, 2 Nico Rosberg; 3 Sebastian Vettel; 4 Jenson Button; 5 Nico Hulkenberg; 6 Fernando Alonso; 7 Valtteri Bottas; 8 Jean-Eric Vergne; 9 Kevin Magnussen; 10 Kimi Raikkonen.
Drivers’ points: Nico Rosberg 140; Lewis Hamilton 118; Daniel Ricciardo 79; Fernando Alonso 69; Sebastian Vettel 60; Nico Hulkenberg 57; Jenson Button 43; Valtteri Bottas 40; Kevin Magnussen 23; Sergio Perez 20.
Constructors’ points: 1 Mercedes 258; 2 Red Bull Renault 139; 3 Ferrari 87; 4 Force India Mercedes 77; 5 McLaren 66; 6 Williams 58; 7 STR Rosso 12; 8 Lotus 8; 9 Marussia 2.
