Great race, every mistake was costly, just ask Norris
The Canadian Grand Prix was without a doubt a very enjoyable race. It was definitely tight among the leading drivers, with a good dose of strategy, and a final phase where the frontrunners were all packed within a handful of seconds, so every mistake could be extremely costly. Obviously, Lando Norris paid dearly for his mistake. He had actually delivered an excellent race with strong pace and rhythm, his best weapons, better than Oscar Piastri once again when it came to managing tires over long stints, but it all went to waste because of a huge error that cost him the race and nearly more for his team. Lando Norris first positioned himself in a corner with no escape, probably hoping to stay very close and slip inside once Oscar Piastri would open his line to brake at turn 1, but he got sucked into the slipstream, braking hard just before contact, realizing what was about to happen, but it was too late. It’s a real shame because the impression is that the championship is being won by the most concrete, cold, and determined driver who deserves the leadership but isn’t necessarily the fastest of the two.
Mercedes’s first win of the season was no accident
Beyond the McLaren duo, the race was obviously well won by George Russell and his Mercedes. The W16 felt very comfortable at Montreal for several reasons that were already evident on Friday, with a race simulation looking very promising. The car’s rear is the strongest point of the Brackley car, and the new rear suspension, on which engineers clearly found the right settings, allowed a step forward even in races with a higher and softer car, especially at the rear to guarantee the best traction.
In China, we remember how Charles Leclerc called the Mercedes a “dragster” for how it would slide on corner exit, and what better track than a stop-and-go circuit with restarts from low speed, no high-speed corners that put too much energy into the tires, and long straights with 22-degree air temperature that can keep peak temperatures under control. The asphalt temperature near 50 degrees was misleading: the cool air and low energy on the tires even caused front-end graining, confirming a very specific condition totally different, for example, from Barcelona. Starting from this assumption, George Russell added his own input, in a season of very high profile for the English driver, who continues to race at a level worthy of a title fight: fantastic in qualifying with his pole lap on Saturday, perfect start, error-free race despite Max Verstappen always being close. Thanks to this package, Mercedes also showed excellent tire management, even if it required pushing everything to the limit, as Kimi Antonelli admitted after the race, saying he just pushed a bit too much behind Max Verstappen, which stressed his tire set.
Alongside Mercedes’s super performance, it must be noted that Red Bull delivered a good but inferior performance compared to many other weekends. Max Verstappen’s car showed much more marked tire degradation, especially with full tanks, with two very early pit stops for the reigning world champion, who then found better pace toward the end of the race with a lighter car. The impression is that there were not many options besides raising and softening the car on this track, and under these conditions, the Milton Keynes car, which performs best when low and stiff, struggled to extract its full potential. Furthermore, Yuki Tsunoda, who started at the back due to a somewhat questionable penalty, was unable to recover into the points, giving the impression of a car that wasn’t particularly strong. Max Verstappen expected this, having forecast difficulties managing the tires right after qualifying, and overall, it’s hard to think he could have done better.
Montreal’s track, which is always a splendid setting, tends to level out the performance differences among this generation of cars, given the almost negligible Power Unit differences and the need to run the cars high and soft, so McLaren did not have many weapons either. Overall, though, Lando Norris’s race until the crash was particularly good, with a real chance of a podium. Had the British driver not started so far back due to a poor qualifying, he could have fought for the win against George Russell, obviously discounting the black holes we see in wheel-to-wheel battles.
As for the Maranello team, the Canadian trip once again delivered few satisfactions. Too many things happened to Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton during the Montreal weekend for them in order to compete in such a tight fight for the lead as the one we saw. From this point of view, Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur is right when he says the SF-25 package was not maximized. Regarding Lewis Hamilton, beyond the seven-time Formula 1 world champion’s lack of confidence with this car, a suicidal groundhog intervened, and a brake pedal that dangerously extended for most of the race made braking very difficult on a track full of braking and acceleration zones. Groundhogs are unfortunately frequent on this track with no apparent way to keep them safe, especially for their own sake.
For Charles Leclerc, beyond the error in free practice, the eighth-place start due to what happened in the qualifying session surely weighed on the result. But not only that. The Monegasque driver was forced to do a huge amount of lift-and-coast for most of the race. If in Spain the primary suspect was the floor, in Montreal, given how persistently the box asked Charles Leclerc to do it and how the Monegasque had to apply it everywhere, suspicions fall on temperature-sensitive elements. Considering the cool air temperatures and new Power Units, brakes remain on the list of suspected culprits. The braking system is often overlooked but, when connecting the dots, it is increasingly proving to be a weak point for the Ferrari for several years now.
We have seen races with asymmetric overheating issues on the front discs, heard Lewis Hamilton repeatedly complain about the braking system, a situation that is often dismissed as simple difficulty adjusting to a system, and we know the Federation recently conducted a thorough check on Ferrari’s braking system. In a race particularly selective on this front like the Canadian Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton ended up with a very long brake pedal for nearly the entire race, and Charles Leclerc often had to leave nearly two-tenths of a second per corner with lift-and-coast to reduce top speed at braking points and thus reduce peak brake load. As long as he could push, Charles Leclerc kept a pace not much different from Lando Norris, namely between one-tenth and at most one and a half tenths slower, but during laps when this became critical, lap times rose by up to one second.
If we add up missing Friday running, the eighth-place start, and the constant brake lift-and-coast, expecting miracles from strategy becomes pointless. Overall, looking at both the data and the race moment, the impression is that a one-stop strategy with Charles Leclerc was possible and could have brought the Monegasque closer to Lando Norris in the final stage of the race, especially for two reasons: there was literally no one behind able to close in on Charles Leclerc except Lewis Hamilton, and the medium tire proved better with a lighter car. Having said that, a quick simulation based on race times produces the same result as the current standings, so the above problems seem ultimately much more indicative of Charles Leclerc’s and Ferrari’s weekend at the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve in general.
— see video above —
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