Amazing Canadian race sees Red Bull knocked off their perch by McLaren
The Canadian GP normally serves up a good race but this year was a special one with non stop action from the first corner until the end. It was the first time that the tyre rules really worked as they were planned to, coupled with the endless capacity that the Gilles Villeneuve track has for incidents and F1 sprang to life.
It was the first race of the year that has started without a Red Bull on pole and with the leading cars split on tyre choice the start looked exciting. It played out that way too with passing in the first few laps. Then by the time that the race had just begun to stabilise the soft tyres started to go off – this was only a few laps into the race. Hamilton and the others on the softer compound pitting to change and the Red Bulls (on the harder tyres) stayed out. The story of the race though was that the hard tyres couldn’t cope either and it wasn’t too long before the Red Bulls had to take on new tyres too. As the track rubbered in the tyres held out better and those that managed to last until the final laps managed to make their soft tyres work – unlike the luckless Michael Schumacher whose tyres were almost non existent by the end was overtaken by both Force India’s on the final lap.
Schumacher has somehow managed to avoid any penalties by the stewards given the way he was defending some of the positions he had but then I imagine that, a) he didn’t score anyway, and b) we need hard racing to make it worth watching. Kubica also avoided a penalty for his wild pit lane entry, it seems he had to do it to avoid the other car – I’m sorry he didn’t, it was dangerous and he should have had something, even if it was just a fine.
In the closing stages the McLaren’s had the race sewn up but Alonso will be pleased to have got on the podium and Vettel and Webber are probably glad to finish at all. Two more laps and we’d have seen more fireworks as Webber was catching Vettel at the end. All in all a great race.
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