The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve on the Île Notre-Dame in Montreal has long been home to the Canadian Grand Prix. The artificial island was originally built for Expo 67 but was later remodeled for the 1976 Olympics; a race track was then constructed out of the roads on the island in 1978. F1 has come and gone in the US and Mexico in that time, but Canada has been a near-constant, missing just 2009.
Many of those races have been classics. 2007 saw Lewis Hamilton's first win, when he was a rookie with McLaren. (Takuma Sato's sixth place in the Super Aguri made that day even better.) 2010 had such extreme tire degradation that then-F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone had Pirelli build that into its tires from 2011 as a feature, one that at times had a highly deleterious effect on racing.
Yesterday's race in Montreal will not be remembered as one of the all-time great Canadian F1 races. Well, perhaps it will by the Mercedes team, which scored its first win of the year with George Russell, and rookie Kimi Antonelli finished third, claiming his first podium. Montreal lacks the long-duration corners that overheat the Mercedes' tires past their best. Instead, it rewards good traction and good braking, both attributes that the silver arrows' car possesses.
Conversely, the McLaren was merely competitive with the other front-runners rather than benefiting from two or three tenths of a second in its pocket as it has at so many of the other rounds this year. Lando Norris could do no better than seventh in qualifying, compared to third on the grid for his teammate Oscar Piastri. Max Verstappen, who remains the only driver who appears capable of challenging either of the McLarens for the driver's title, qualified second.
Russell led from the start and kept Verstappen in check throughout the race until the thing McLaren has surely been dreading all year happened. Thanks to pit strategy, Norris had moved up the running order and was in fifth place, trying to pass Piastri for fourth. After thinking better of it at the hairpin at the far end of the circuit, Norris thought he saw an opportunity going into turn 1. Instead, he misjudged things, and the gap disappeared. His front wing met Piastri's rear tire, his car's left side met the concrete wall, and his day was done.
With two such closely matched drivers in equal machinery, a collision on track was bound to occur. As McLaren teammate collisions go, this one lacked the near-hatred of Prost versus Senna and didn't cost it a win in the process. Now that it's out of the way, hopefully the kids won't do it again.
Norris' crash brought out a safety car, which remained in effect for the final few laps of the race. So little happened during the race that the highlight reel that plays in the green room post-race was over almost before it started.
It’s all getting a bit aggro
The off-track action has been far more vicious, with two big stories dominating the buildup to the Grand Prix. The first was Verstappen's penalty points: Accumulate 12 points in 12 months, and the result is a one-race ban. Verstappen is currently on 11 points following his collision with Russell in Spain, so any slip-up that earns him a penalty point will send Red Bull scrambling to find enough drivers to fill all four of its cars (two Red Bulls, two RBs), should the reigning world champion get benched.
In fact, Red Bull is so concerned that other drivers might try to taunt Verstappen into misbehaving that it spoke to the officials about the matter. Then again, Russell needled the Red Bull team after qualifying by pointing out that he has "a few more points on [his]license to play with."
As it was, Red Bull protested Russell's win, claiming that the Mercedes driver was goading Verstappen into passing him under the safety car, which is not allowed, in the hopes of triggering that ban. That appeal came to nothing, and the Russell/Mercedes victory stands.
The other big fight has seen the Italian sporting press turn its sights on Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur. Although Vasseur was hired to run the Scuderia, the Italian press views that as its job, and it doesn't like what it has been seeing. For the last 17 years, Ferrari hasn't built a car that can challenge for the title, and while Vasseur was not responsible for bringing Hamilton to Ferrari—that was all down to billionaire industrialist and owner John Elkann—the lack of pace from the seven-time champion is more than those journalists can take.
So the knives are out for Vasseur, just as they came for Mattia Binnotto before him. Ferrari has had four team bosses since 2014, and none of them have been afforded by the Italian press the time necessary to truly turn the team around. Much of the success it found in the early 2000s was down to a rigid pact between then-boss Jean Todt, then-technical director Ross Brawn, and Michael Schumacher, who agreed that if one of them were forced out, all three would go. The team won five championships in a row and challenged for many more under Todt's tenure, but it took seven years to get that first title in 2000. Maybe they should try a little patience?
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