Sebastian Vettel drove a controlled race to pick up his first win of his career at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve as he extended his lead in the championship.
The Canadian Grand Prix began over a wet weekend, but the weather conditions remained pleasant for Sunday’s race. Vettel started on pole for Red Bull with Lewis Hamilton in P2 and Valtteri Bottas in P3 for Williams, his career best starting position. Felipe Massa would start in P16 after he crashed in Q2. Toro Rosso’s Daniel Ricciardo was given a 2-place penalty for minor incidents in qualifying, as was Kimi Raikkonen in his Lotus Renault, who qualified in P9 but dropped to P10. His team mate Romain Grosjean was given a more severe 10-place penalty for causing a crash at the last race in Monaco.
The start was exciting with everyone jostling for position. Vettel got a clean start, as did Lewis Hamilton but Bottas was muscled by both the Mercedes AMG of Nico Rosberg and the Red Bull of Mark Webber. Fernando Alonso also got his Ferrari ahead of Bottas over the lap. Lap 5 saw contact between the Force India of Adrian Sutil and the Williams of Pastor Maldonado. Sutil spun off and risked getting hit by a few cars, but he managed to come out unscathed and continued. The incident was being reviewed by the stewards.
Webber pitted early in his Red Bull while his team-mate Vettel came in on Lap 16, allowing Hamilton to temporarily take over the race lead until he pitted on lap 20. Raikkonen came in on lap 23, but suffered a delay when the rear jack got stuck, making him lose even more track position.
On lap 30, Alonso, who was on a charge, had caught up with Rosberg and Webber. A lap later, Rosberg lost not one, but two positions to Alonso and Webber. 10 laps later, Alonso overtook Webber as well. Alonso was now setting quick lap times and lap 58 saw him set the fastest lap of the race. Vettel, however, responded by upping his pace. Sutil was given a drive through penalty, but was running in a strong position. He re-emerged from the pits in 10th. Alonso meanwhile had caught up with Hamilton with just 7 laps to go. He tried going around twice, but Hamilton firmly shut the door. On the straight though, Alonso went through. With just one lap remaining, Massa overtook Raikkonen to bring a couple of more points home for Ferrari.
Vettel took the chequered flag for the first time in his career in Canada amidst a huge celebration from his team. Alonso finished second and Hamilton came in in third. Vettel now leads the driver’s standings by a comfortable 36 points on 132. Alonso is now second on 96 with Raikkonen down in third with 88. In the constructor’s championship, Red Bull have 201 points, Ferrari are second with 145, and Mercedes jump Lotus Renault by 20 points to occupy third place with 134.
