Errors Cost Russell As Verstapppen Wins In Montreal | Canadian Grand Prix 2024
Canada is a brilliant racetrack, improved, for two reasons, by the rain. First, the mere thought of the 2011 Grand Prix bubbles up deep and formative joy for a generation of fans. Second, the fact that as a street circuit with partial tree cover, the circuit dries at varying rates.
This more boring point is what creates the minefield of subtle and lingering dampness whenever the wet stuff comes down, coaxing mistakes from the best drivers to grace four wheels. Sure enough the 2023 edition served up a pile of victims in a race whose result at no point felt inevitable. For dessert, not one groundhog was marmelised through slats carbon fibre on live television, and that can’t be said every year.
Having been fast in the weather-reduced practice sessions Mercedes were hoping for a return to glory, and nearly got it too. George Russell is a talented driver, there’s no doubting that, but one whose Williams years perhaps engrained a level of desperate gungho-ness that several times has been his undoing, the sense that opportunities must be grabbed teeth gritted and brow furrowed before they sink forever beneath the waves.
The sentiment may be true, but an athlete can never afford to believe it. There will always be another race, another chance on another lap. Yet sure enough, with twenty-one of them in the can, Russell outbroke himself trying to recover his lead from the far faster Norris, bailed out over the runoff, and lost a further place to Verstappen, who he couldn’t threaten for the rest of the race.
Not that Verstappen was comfortable. It was Norris who applied the most pressure, having passed Russell and Verstappen on successive laps and begun pulling away at a phenomenal rate- two seconds a lap and more. The rain that doused the race start had stopped, but more bands were expected. If in his burgeoning career Norris has proven brilliant in soggy and drying conditions, his weakness has been being the transitioning between them.
On this occasion it wasn’t all on him, however. On lap twenty-five, Sargeant, who’d already poked the back wall of the turn six runoff area on his fifth circulation, did a proper job of it at turn four, spinning on exit in such a way that both the front and rear wings scraped along the outside wall. The terminal damage bought out the safety car and Norris’s lead, then eight seconds, meant by this time he’d already passed the pitlane entry.
Verstappen, Russell, and Piastri had not, and duly pitted for fresh intermediates. When Norris was able to do the same next time around not only had his lead been wiped out, but he’d been relegated to third. Leclerc also took the chance to pit, but under very different circumstances.
Having won the last race in Monaco, mysterious engine issues costing a second a lap made progress from eleventh on the grid impossible. Knowing he’d emerge last anyway the car was switched off and on again, which appeared to clear the engine fault. That same knowledge prompted a gamble on slick tyres, but as Verstappen restarted the race, the rain returned.
Ferrari endured a terrible weekend. Leclerc somehow survived for two laps, switched back to intermediates, chugged along fifty seconds off the back of the field, got lapped, and then retired, presumably so save wear on parts. On lap fifty Sainz lost control at turn six and collected Albon mid pirouette, eliminating both drivers. The Spaniard had started twelfth and the heady heights of ninth clearly got to his head.
If wet conditions messed with Ferrari then the reduced Perez to a shivering wreck. When Massa spun five times at Silverstone in 2008 there was as much determination on display as there was standing water, but Perez, having started sixteenth after again being eliminated in Q1 and damaging his front wing at the first corner, was still thirteenth when he finally put himself out of his misery the lap before the Sainz / Albon crash.
Five days ago Red Bull announced he had been given a two-year contract, and he drove like a man granted immunity, showing no adventure or appetite for risk of any kind. He didn’t spin in the heat of battle, but innocuously, all by himself, after a long period of driving around and achieving nothing.
His parting gift was that the debris from his crumbling rear wing, now dotted along the route between ground zero at turn six and the pit lane, together with the remaindered ride of Alex Albon, brought out a second safety car, and so set up a twelve lap sprint to the end. Five drivers sat in podium contention, and their finishing order was anyone’s guess.
For the previous twenty laps the leading quartet of Verstappen, Russell, Norris, and Piastri were locked a few seconds distant from each other, a round of pitstops for slick tyres failing to produce a breakthrough. Again Norris’ deployed stunning speed to attempt an overcut, and rejoined the track leading by a nose. But on the wet tarmac of the pit exit, helplessly squirming and twitching in search of traction, he watched Verstappen cruise past on acclimatised mediums.
With the addition of Hamilton squeezed up to the rear of the four, the restart was a similar scene, Verstappen pulling a Vettel-esque two seconds immediately and leaving the napping Norris with a choice. Russel and Hamilton had pit under the second safety car and with their new tyres threatened an assault on the podium. Piastri was third for McLaren, and should he let Verstappen go, Norris could give his teammate DRS and protect their two-three order from the two Mercedes.
Option two was hunting Verstappen for a shot at victory securing second place at worst for himself, and leaving Piastri to the dogs. Verstappen’s breakaway and gradual lead building removed victory from the equation, but Russell was all over Piastri and armed with the speed to swallow both McLarens. On lap sixty-three he attacked, Norris was granted permission to save himself, and Piastri was doomed.
Bravely, he defended, though at an overwhelming disadvantage of which Russell was well aware. It was then that his Williams complex re-surfaced, and his overambitious second bite at Piastri on lap sixty-four led to contact. As he bumped over the run off at the last chicane any hope of catching Norris and Verstappen vanished, and Hamilton snuck through. The elder Brit made no such mess in passing Piastri, and though Russell did eventually get the pair of them to finish third, it could have been more.
The same could be said of the two Haas cars, who each gained ten places on their grid positions in the first eight laps by starting on extreme wet tyres, before losing them again when the rain stopped, and the track dried out.
Magnussen climbed to a brilliant fourth before having to pit, and would have stayed in the top ten had the pit crew had his tyres ready. Instead, a slow stop dropped him back to where he started, and normal service was resumed. Hulkenberg reached eighth but conversely stayed out until his tyres boiled over, loosing so much time that he rejoined dead last.
It means finishing eleventh and twelfth will feel somewhat hollow, especially as five drivers retired. Aston Martin will be beaming with sixth and seventh, but Mercedes and Daniel Riccardo will be happier still. From the reeds and the wilderness, and under increasing pressure, they’re back, so it seems. Spain, in two weeks from now, will determine whether anything has stuck.
Final Order: VER, NOR, RUS, HAM, PIAS, ALO, STR, RIC, GAS, OCO, HUL, MAG, BOT, TSU ZHOU. DNF: SAI, ALB, PER, LEC, SAR
