FINAL LAP....AND IT’S ALL OVER AS LEWIS HAMILTON WINS THE CANADIAN GRAND PRIX!
He’s won the race from pole position despite Sebastian Vettel stealing an early first lap march on him. Vettel finished in second, with Williams’ Valtteri Bottas scoring the team’s first podium of the year. Hamilton now has back-to-back victories after his win in Monaco.
FINAL TWO LAPS! Looks like it’s all but decided here – Lewis Hamilton leads from Sebastian Vettel, with Valtteri Bottas in third. Could this be Williams’ first podium of 2016?
Now Rosberg is chasing Verstappen – but the young driver does not give the German championship leader any room. Good defensive work from the teenager. McLaren’s Fernando Alonso is quite obviously frustrated and the team, having already lost Jenson Button to an engine failure today, push him saying “keep going Fernando”.
Felipe Massa is being interviewed now. “Power unit is being investigated,” he clarifies. It’s apparently an issue with overheating, but we won’t know more until after the race. 8 laps to go and Vettel has gone through the final chicane a bit slower than he should have. He’s lost valuable time and now the game has gone from 5.9s to 6.8.
And Kimi Raikkonen has lost P5! Nico Rosberg, dogging him on Lap 59, uses his speed as he brakes and drifts – to get a move up to P5!
Rosberg pits and comes out with a set of the softs. All of the top 5 – HAM VET VES BOT RAI are all on the soft compound in their respective two-stoppers.
4.8seconds. That’s the gap between race leader Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel. Meanwhile, Rosberg on the softs is chasing Valtteri Bottas in P3 looking for a podium spot to significantly extend his lead.
Temperatures are around 12 degrees Celsius at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve and most drivers are on the softs now. Verstappen pits quickly changing from a one-stop to a two-stop, getting onto a set of the ultrasofts again.
Vettel pits again to switch from ultrasofts to softs; meanwhile, Massa’s Williams is back in the garage. He’s the third driver to retire from today’s race. He was the only driver to have scored in every race this season and now that run has ended. Teammate Valtteri Bottas is doing well to stay in P4, however.
Rosberg gets Daniel Ricciardo, who pits – and again his pit stop is slower than it needs to be. He’s lost valuable time with the front right tyre.
Not a bad continuation of the race for Ferrari. Vettel holds on to his lead as Raikkonen pits and comes out 35 laps in. He’s in P8 now.
Kimi Raikkonen is moving up the grid and quickly! After Rosberg drove ithe sason and then lost out, he’s moiving up aain!
26 laps in and it’s now the lower-marker drivers woar
Vettel now puts in the fastest lap of the race – and he had a good run, with even principal Arrivabene surprised!
SEBASTIAN VETTEL gets on the inside of Daniel Ricciardo – and takes it! He’s moved up to P3 now behind Max Verstappen after locking up for a small bit moving up on Ricciardo.
End of Lap 11 and Vettel pits while the VSC is still out – and he manages to pit just as the Virtual Safety Car is lifted! He’s lost valuable time there and now has dropped to P4. Max Verstappen moves up to 2nd and Daniel Ricciardo is in third behind leader Lewis Hamilton.
All three are on ultrasofts.
There’s a 40% chance of rain here, they say. And a number of drvers on the circuit are fond of wet weather drives – is there more bite in this race?
VIRTUAL SAFETY CAR! And more problems for McLaren-Honda....
Again... after the Grand Prix at Monaco, which saw the VSC present for a large part of the race, it’s in Lap 11 that it’s now deployed again. And for the second year in a row, Jenson Button retires from the Canadian Grand Prix; his engine’s billowing smoke and he pulls over, and he is done with the race. Disappointing for the team.
The two Mercedes were involved in a shunt that took Rosberg ‘out’ temporarily as the German ran wide; he dropped to P10 but is now up in P9 after stealing a march on McLaren’s Fernando Alonso.
An aggressive start from Vettel on a track with long high-speed straights – and the gap between VET and HAM, at 0.9s, is bigger than the Ferrari-Mercedes gap usually is. That’ll be good news for the tifosi, or fans of Ferrari – and there appear to be a lot of them today at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, named for the late Canadian driver, whose son Jacques is a former F1 World Champion.
LIGHTS OUT! AND straightaway, Sebastian Vettel grabs the lead! Aggressive day from Ferrari up ahead?
Rosberg misdrives through the chicane and he’s dropped to P10. Not a great start. Hamilton’s got his DRS enabled and chasing Sebastian Vettel – and now there’s another contender in the mix! Max Verstappen has stolen ahead of his teammate Daniel Ricciardo and he’s in P3 now!
FORMATION LAP! We’re seconds away from lights outand drivers are now lining up on the grid ready to race!
It’s time for the 2016 Canadian Grand Prix, the seventh and Lewis Hamilton is looking to wrest control of the season back from his dominant teammate Nico Rosberg! After four race wins on the trot for the German, his double world-championship winning reigning titleholder teammate is looking to make an inroad back into the championship again this year.
With a surprise win for then Red Bull-newbie Max Verstappen at the Grand Prix of Spain, Hamilton came back to take the win at the Monaco Grand Prix after what had seemed like Red Bull – and Daniel Ricciardo’s – race to lose.
Ricciardo had qualified on pole for the Monaco Grand Prix, in what had been the first pole position of the Australian’s career, although he has won races before.
The team and driver had looked dominant for a significant section of the race, when the driver pitted for a tyre change. That disastrous pit stop, reminiscent of the Minardi of the early 1990s, saw Ricciardo lose valuable time that did eventually cost him the race, with Hamilton seizing the opportunity to steal a march on his colleague.
The Briton held on to the lead until the end of the race, and despite Ricciardo’s best effforts – which went on until the final lap – he was unable to wrest control of the race back from the Mercedes driver, who, at the sixth race of the season, took his first ever win.
Meanwhile, Verstappen, who was promoted to Red Bull and switched places with Daniil Kvyat, who took his spot at Toro Rosso, impressed straight away on debut with Red Bull, winning the Spanish Grand Prix at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya at an impressive race that saw him combine racing, effective tyre strategy and consistent straight line speeds to take victory.
Unfortunately, he was unable to replicate his performance in Monaco, crashing twice – once during qualifying and the second time during the race.
Red Bull, however, have this year established themselves firmly as race contenders, with good racing from each of their drivers – Ricciardo, who has had the most consistency, Kvyat, who has also scored podiums, and his now-replacement, Verstappen.
Another impressive series of performances have come off the back of two-time world champion Fernando Alonso. The Spaniard, who won his titles with Renault in 2005 and 2006, has suffered with an unreliable engine since he joined McLaren-Honda, partnering 2009 World Champion Jenson Button. In the past few races, however, the 30-year-old has put in singular performances, most recently finishing 5th in Monaco – a marked change from the team’s repeated DNFs from the 2015 season.
Renault’s works team has also returned this year, but the drivers have put in some disappointing performances despite the team’s significant legacy.
The French manufacturers have, however, renewed their relationship with Red Bull, despite the pair having decided to end their relationship at the end of the 2015 season. The two will now partner till the end of the 2018 season instead.
The race will begin at 11:30p.m. IST.
