Well done Canada, once again delivering a deeply interesting race bookended by two sizeable accidents causing an immense amount of damage to those vehicles involved. But the events of this evening's race in Montreal has delivered a series of firsts, some positive, and some less so. It is the first race which can't be summarised as "...and Mercedes drove away never to be seen again..." but the reign of domination isn't over because before it started to fall apart the pace was as irresistible as always. Today was also the first race when we can say that one pair of team-mates will be less friendly to one another than the Mercedes pair after a considerable coming together on the opening lap. Given what we saw through the practice sessions when anything without a Mercedes engine was being crucified in a straight line who'd have thought that this of all races would be the race where a Renault powered car stole the first non-Mercedes victory of the season. It is also one of the very rare Canadian GP weekend when no-one paid a visit to the wall of Champions.
The Race
After watching the nostalgic Super Touring car race rained off at Oulton Park I was hoping for the GP to pick things up and cancel out the disappointment, and while Montreal was bathed in the bright sunshine that was missing in Cheshire, I felt that even a dry race could provide a strong end to the evening.
At the start the immediate rivalry between the two Mercedes team-mates came very close to ending in more anger and bad feeling from one side of the garage to the other. Hamilton made a better launch off the line and was side-by-side with Nico at the apex of turn one. Rosberg just opened out the steering and closed the door on Lewis forcing the Briton wide - also allowing Vettel to steal second place. Somehow everyone managed to avoid each other through the first two corners given the tendency for first corner collisions. We didn't have to wait too long before the madness began as serial finisher Max Chilton got every shade of sideways in turn three. The wayward Marussia managed to collect Jules Bianchi the Monaco points scorer, and fired the Frenchman heavily into the outside wall. Ironically the weaker structural design of the rear suspension on Bianchi's car may have prevented it from being flipped over into the concrete wall. But as the entire rear section of the car was severed on impact rupturing oil-lines and causing a lot of damage the safety car was deployed to clean up the devastation.
The clean up took a long time but after 8 laps of safety car the race was back on again, and as soon as the DRS was reactivated Hamilton was able to use the superior power of the Mercedes to power ahead of Vettel's Red Bull on the back straight before the chicane. For this early phase of the race normal service resumed as the Mercedes drivers vanished off into the distance as we've seen many, many times before this season. Despite only running a handful of laps under green flag conditions there were a lot of drivers heading in for an early set of stops. Unfortunately for Marcus Eriksson his first stop was permanent as mechanical dramas forced the Caterham to retire. Things went from bad to worse for Caterham as we saw Kobayashi spinning in turn two with one rear wheel pointing in a direction it really shouldn't be. So after the race in which we saw one of the newer teams score their first ever points, all four cars from the bottom teams had been eliminated.
Even in the higher track temperatures it seemed like the tyres were taking a long time to come up to temperature once a car had been released from a pit-stop. Rosberg for example came perilously close to smashing the Mercedes against the turn four wall after getting very sideways. Alonso was struggling to retain track position ahead of Jean-Eric Vergne in the Toro Rosso continually locking up the inside front under breaking. Raikkonen in the other Ferrari was also racing with a Toro Rosso of Daniil Kvyat - Kimi was inside the Russian with only the tiniest margin of overlap in the breaking zone for the chicane. Fortunately Daniil spotted the Ferrari and didn't turn in as that would have only ended in contact. There was one team who were not exposed to all this shuffling through the pit-stops and that was Force India. Both Nico and Sergio were planning a single stop strategy... after so many years One-Stop Perez was one-stopping again, which normally ends well. The pair were running third and fourth behind the Mercedes drivers out front. Vettel tried to take the position away from Hulkenberg at the hairpin, but ran wide and was immediately re-passed.
Right at the front of the field Nico Rosberg was coming under yet more pressure from Hamilton for the second race in succession, Lewis drifting in and of DRS range of the sister car. Just as Hamilton geared up for another attack on his team-mate, Nico locked up coming into the final chicane and short-cut the corner. The entire world seemed to be up in arms about this mistake, virtually calling for Rosberg's head on a platter. Yes he'd cut the corner after making an error, but it wasn't as if Nico's incident decided the whole race and ruined Hamilton's day, nor was it a repeat event. Yet under pressure from Hamilton (probably) the incident was investigated by the stewards which returned a 'don't do that again' verdict. To make matters worse for Nico, he was informed over the radio to improve fuel saving, after the team told him he was good to go to the end on fuel earlier in the race. One can only assume the consumption went up as the German had to push harder to keep enough of a distance between himself and Hamilton. Further back we see the straight line speed advantage of the Williams being used to great effect to drive round the outside of Fernando Alonso on the approach to turn one, taking the place before the corner.
Meanwhile one-stop Perez stopped once... ah just like the good old days. This left Hulkenberg with a queue of cars lining up behind him as Nico's tyres were starting to show their age. In an attempt to break free of the traffic Bottas pitted for a second time, only to rejoin in a second queue involving Vergne, Raikkonen and Jenson Button at the tail end of the points.
Now this is when things got a little confusing, just as pizzas arrived at blog HQ, because an awesome race needs pizza, the whole world seemed to fall out of the bottom of the race. I left the room for literally three minutes to acquire food and Mercedes race had turned upside down (not literally because Maldonado had retired by this point). Both cars were hit by some strange mysterious simultaneous problem which crippled the ERS recovery systems. They started to lose huge lumps of time, so much for Mercedes being immune to reliability issues. The drivers were instructed to reset the system as they were driving - the good old "turn it off and on again" routine. While both drivers continued to lose time and struggle with the problems, Massa now in third was closing in on the two leaders. At the opposite end of the points we see Raikkonen spinning the Ferrari on the exit of the hairpin all by himself.
After both Mercedes cars cycled through their stops we found ourselves in an unprecedented situation - a different team was leading. Felipe Massa became the first non-Mercedes driver to lead a lap this season. But that paled into insignificance with what was unfolding behind the Brazilian. Hamilton had jumped Rosberg in the stops but lost that position when the car ran out brakes at the hairpin. Lewis had DRS on Nico and drew back up alongside into the final chicane, but suffered a terminal rear brake failure and was lucky to avoid the wall. This did mean that Hamilton was out. Nico was instructed to be very careful on the brakes as his were in a similarly critical condition. All influenced by the fact that the ERS had failed which in turn affects rear braking where the energy is recovered.
Felipe Massa was unable to hang onto the lead as the Williams driver had to make a second stop promoting Rosberg to the front. One-stop Perez had one-stopped himself up into second place, but was also informed to be careful on his degrading brakes. This made Sergio vulnerable to the challenges of the Red Bull team sitting virtually on top of the Mexican for the final third of the race. A few seconds further down the road, Hulkenberg was holding back another pair of team-mates from the Williams squad. Massa having just pitted was faster than Bottas and asked the team if he could be allowed past. Within seconds of a message being played over the TV instructing Bottas to move over, the Finn threw one down the inside of Hulkenberg's Force India. I suppose he can't relinquish the position if he puts a car between himself and Massa. But Valtteri's pass didn't pay off and he ran wide, slowing Hulkenberg in the process allowing Felipe to pass the pair of them.
One-stop Perez had now caught Rosberg for the lead, and brought Ricciardo and Vettel with him to launch a titanic four way fight for the lead... in theory. Somehow despite being massively down on power, Perez started to lose ground to to the Mercedes. The Mexican's brake problems prevented him from launching an attack for the lead, while keeping an Australian in a Red Bull from taking his second place. Daniel Ricciardo kept up the pressure and was able to pass Perez round the outside of turn one because the Force India couldn't break late enough to defend the position. But this was now a far bigger problem for Rosberg, as he now had a fully healthy car hunting him down. Vettel also had Massa now putting him under severe pressure at the tail end of the leading train of cars, Felipe drew the Williams alongside from time to time but couldn't make it through.
Out front there was a change for the lead of the race - Daniel Ricciardo simply drove past Nico Rosberg, the Mercedes without ERS and brakes on the edge of failure had no defence against the Red Bull. For the first time in 2014 a Mercedes nor a Mercedes powered car was looking at a victory. With only two laps left on the clock Jenson Button made an impressive double pass on Fernando Alonso and Nico Hulkenberg at the hairpin to take 6th place. Also we saw Sebastian Vettel steal the final place on the podium from One-Stop Perez in the final chicane as his brakes allowed the German to take the place. It also gave Massa a run coming out of the chicane on Perez, but Felipe (it appears) didn't account for the lack of braking capacity Sergio had at his disposal. Massa therefore was caught out by Perez braking earlier into turn one and slammed into the back of the Force India. Perez torpedoed into the tyre wall at an immense speed, while Massa missing a front wheel slid across the inside of turn one. The careering Williams missed Vettel by mere inches as it rejoined and smashed head first into the tyre wall protecting the big tree in the run off. Both cars were severely damaged and both drivers were taken to hospital for precautionary checks after recording impact forces of over 25G. Fortunately the are reportedly ok, and Massa posted a thumbs up photograph of himself from the hospital bed.
Inevitably the race finished under the safety car, cementing Ricciardo as the winner, his first win and the first driver to beat Mercedes this year. Rosberg dragged the terminally ill Mercedes home in second place, equalling his worst finish of the season. Sebastian Vettel narrowly avoided being wiped out of the race to take the final podium position. Jenson Button benefited from the final lap crash to move up into 4th place ahead of Hulkenberg and Alonso. Bottas dropped down to 7th with more brake difficulties on his car, followed by Vergne, Magnussen and Raikkonen.
The Bonus Points Championship Points Winners
Today has been a day of firsts, first DNF for Chilton... after hitting Bianchi, first Non-Mercedes to lead a race and then the first win for a driver. Here are the points from today.
- 25pts - Daniel Ricciardo - His first win and the first driver this season to finish ahead of a Mercedes that has completed the race
- 18pts - Sergio Perez - Executing an almost perfect one-stop race being close to victory before brake problems took over and then Massa took him out
- 15pts - Felipe Massa - For being the first driver to lead the race other than a Mercedes this season
- 12pts - Nico Rosberg - Has to have some points for dragging that car home which was over 60hp down on power with ruined brakes
- 10pts - Nico Hulkenberg - Another one stop strategy that almost paid off but fell back towards the end of the race
- 8pts - Jenson Button - An awesome final move to be in position to capitalise on the final crash to take 4th position
- 6pts - Sebastian Vettel - Deserves some points for showing brilliant awareness to steer out of the way of Massa's out of control Williams
- 4pts - Valtteri Bottas - Up until his problems the Finn was having another strong performance.
- 3pts - Daniil Kvyat - Scores some points for his spacial awareness when under pressure from Raikkonen in the final chicane
- 2pts - Adrian Sutil - Has a pair of consolation points for being the only driver who effectively finished the race without scoring a point.
- 1pt - Max Chilton - Takes the final point for the being the only driver to end his streak of finishing races by taking out his own team-mate....
Looking Ahead to Austria
The Austrian GP is tipped as the first of the two new circuits to join the calendar for 2014, but the A1 Ring (now entitled the Red Bull ring) is merely returning after a sabbatical. But as it has been away for so long it is somewhat of an unknown quantity, the layout is the same as it was back in the day, but Red Bull millions have been used to bring it back after years of neglect. That means new and improved pit facilities and places to store all the rich folk who come to watch because their companies are plastered all over the place, not because they like the sport.
While the world isn't really prepared to hazard a guess as to who is going to take top honours in Austria, but there are a lot of straights, especially in the first sector for those Mercedes powered cars to do well. While it was nice to see a new face on the top step of the podium today, I fear normal service will resume in a fortnight's time.
No comments:
Post a Comment