The Formula 1 circus cross the Atlantic for their first visit to the America's this year! This time for Round 7 of the 2013 Formula 1 season! The teams and drivers got ready to blaze the Circuit Giles Villeneuve and avoid crashing into the famous "Wall of Champions"! Read on to find out how the weekend panned out!
Practice:
Friday Practice started off drivers going around the track on intermediate tires courtesy the rain that had made the track very wet and slippery! This meant that Pirelli's newer prototype tires dint get tried yet.
Force India, who were celebrating their 100th GP start this weekend, were more than happy when
Di Resta topped FP1 in the changing conditions!
FP2 started off with a dry track so the drivers could try on the new tires. This gave a us clearer idea of how fast the teams were and who was yet to improve!
Alonso topped the session and edged out Hamilton by just
0.012s! It looked like Ferrari and Mercedes were going to have a good weekend at this point!
Free Practice 3 on Saturday was cut short to 30 minutes due to the delay in repairing the damage on the barriers at Turn 11 caused by a support race car!
Mark Webber and
Red Bull showed how good they can be and topped the session! They were looking for their first win at this track! The track was damp at this point with more rain expected for Qualifying!
Qualifying:
Just before
Q1 started, it started raining! The drivers came out on Supersofts and came right back in to switch to Intermediates. With both drivers from the bottom two teams not making the cut,
Di Resta and
Grojean made a shock exit at the end of first part of qualifying! Rain was getting harder in
Q2 and
Massa got it all wrong sliding into wall at Turn 3! This brought out the
Red Flag with less than 2 minutes to go! When it was time to restart the session, all drivers made their way out to the end of the pitlane in order to get a good time!
Button misjudged this and couldn't cross the line before the Chequered Flag. Neither of the Sauber's or Mclaren's made the cut!
Q3 was just about to start and the pitlane queue formed again! This time Kimi jumped Webber when the session went green. He was later penalized.
Vettel set the pace followed by Hamilton. The surprise this time was William's
Bottas who put his car in P3 before the rain came out! After this noone could really improve their times! Alonso qualified in 6th while Raikkonen managed only 9th! After Qualifying Raikkonen and Ricciardo were penalized two grid places for not exiting the pit lane in a proper way! They both eventually dropped just one place on the grid!
Race:
It was race day and the sun was out! Fans came out in full swing and everybody were ready to see if Vettel could hold of Hamilton and what surprises the others could spring!
As the lights went out Vettel managed to stay ahead of the pack and that's it! After that his Red Bull just kept pulling away with some amazing pace! Bottas who was the star of qualifying immediately dropped back and others made their move! Those who couldn't get past initially were stuck and we could see a long train of cars behind him!
Vettel had an amazing lead over the rest! Almost 18 seconds at one point of time! Nobody could even get close to him! On lap 10 Vettel just kissed the Wall of Champions. On lap 52 Vettel pushed very hard, even though he had a comfortable lead, and went off at turn 1! On the last lap Vettel was going for the fastest lap but later backed off when his engineer Rocky said this " Monaco, 1988, Senna". In that race Senna lost focus and crashed! Vettel replied " Ok ok, I'm just kidding"! He really needs to listen a lot more to his team!
All in all Vettel lead the race from start to finish without making any costly mistakes and finally scored Red Bull's maiden victory in Canada!
Behind Vettel it was
Hamilton who was holding off Webber and later Alonso for most of the race! In the final stint he had a good 10 second lead over his competitors and that's when Alonso started closing in on him!
Alonso's final stint was brilliant! He had a good fight with Webber for P3 and then later challenged Hamilton for P2 which saw them touch a couple of times!
Webber was looking set for 3rd after he passed Rosberg early in the race . It went all wrong for him after his move to lap Caterham's Van Der Garde at the hairpin! The Caterham touched Webber's Red Bull and damaged his front wing! Webber was going faster after this but later decided to drop back and settle for 4th!
Rosberg started in 4th and suffered from tyre degradation. He was the only front runner to make 3 pit stops! He surely wouldn't have been satisfied with just 5th! Amazingly Lewis dint suffer from as tyre wear so Mercedes need to look into that!
Jean Eric Vergne started the race in 7th and amazingly finished in 6th! This is his best finish yet! The team will be really happy with his performance!
Paul Di Resta finished in 7th after starting from 17th! That's an amazing feat by the scot! He made just one stop on lap 57! Just 13 laps before the end. He drove superbly and had enough pace on those medium tires till the end of his first stint! He won many hearts and gave Force India a lot to be happy about! His teammate
Sutil started out in 8th and after a spin in the beginning while trying to overtake Bottas he dropped back and later recovered for 10th!
Massa will be really happy with his performance. He made up 8 place after stopping twice. He needs to avoid making mistakes and stay up there if he wants to driver for Ferrari next year. A mediocre 8th for him!
Raikkonen started out in 10th and finished in 9th! He had a problem during one of his pit-stops and also had a problem with his brake pedal. In the end the only thing he can be happy about is equaling Schumacher's record of finishing in the points consecutively for 24 races! Not that Kimi cars about these records!
Perez and Button finished in 11th and 12th! This was Mclaren's first non point scoring finish in 65 races! That speaks for itself! They still have a lot to improve!
Grosjean who started in 22nd made his way up the grid and finished in 13th! It looked like he too was on a one stopper but he made a late race stop for fresh tires!
Van Der Garde and
Hulkenburg had a moment on track and later they both retired!
Gutierrez collided with the barriers at turn 2 and retired with 4 laps to go!
This was Vettel's 29th Grand Prix win and his first at this circuit! A very dominant victory by the young German!
Results:
After the race there was sad news that came out from the paddock! A marshal who was helping in the recovery of Gutierrez's Sauber had come under the crane that was lifting the car and later succumbed to the injuries. Condolences to his family and friends. Thank you for making tracks safer! RIP!
Next up will be the British Grand Prix in 3 week's time! Stay safe and keep reading and following F1!
