MONTREAL – Max Verstappen maintained his place in the Formula One championship struggle by stopping a late challenge from Carlos Sainz Jr to take his sixth win of the season in a fairly easy Sunday drive in Canada grand opening.
Verstappen wins from pole at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve to extend leaderboard lead to 46 points Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez, who retired early because of gearbox problems.
“There’s still a long way to go and I know the gap is of course quite large, but I also know that can change very quickly,” Verstappen said of his view. He noted that he was 46 points behind Charles Leclerc after the third race of the season.
The Dutch player had no trouble cleaning up Fernando Alonsowho claimed his first starting spot in a decade then joked that he would attack Verstappen in the first round to claim the victory.
But there was no challenge and by the time Sainz overtook Alonso for second in the 2nd half, Verstappen had a 2.4-second lead in his Red Bull. Sainz was able to close the gap in the last 10 rounds and put pressure on the defending champion F1 champion but faint in the final round and finished 0.993 seconds slower than Ferrari.
“It’s a good race, it’s always more fun if you can really push than just save your tyres,” Verstappen said.
Sainz said Monday was the best he could get on Sunday.
“When I gave everything, I risked everything,” Sainz said. “I can tell you I tried. I leave everything out there. For the first time in this season, I can say that I am the fastest on the track, which gives me confidence and some hope for the next races. ”
Mercedes made a tremendous recovery from season-long struggles, including a bad Friday game, as a seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton scored his first goal since the inaugural race of the season in March. George Russell finished fourth as Hamilton beat his new teammate for the second time in nine races this season.
“It feels great to be in the battle and I’m still keeping up with these guys in the end, but it gives me and the team a lot of hope,” Hamilton said. “There’s real potential if we can get it set up right and I think that’s the hardest thing this year. “
Hamilton received a standing ovation after the finish and said he had no problems with his back, which has plagued him all season because of the way the new Mercedes swam across the track.
The 37-year-old said: “It’s good, I’m back as a young person. But he added “we still have variation, but the difference between night and day.”
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff admitted after the race the team raised the height of their cars to make them easier to drive and remove the “porter” effect that has bogged down Hamilton and Russell all season. The bounce has caused back pain and headaches for its drivers.
“The (wind) tunnel has told us that the lower the car goes, the faster you go, the more impact it will have on the ground,” says Wolff. “But in reality, you can’t drive there so you need to lift it, and lift it, and lift it, and on paper, you’re losing half a second or so in downforce.
“We raised it already (Saturday) but the more you raise it, the more you lose performance. So it’s always a compromise.”
Verstappen, meanwhile, has now won six of the first nine races of his title defense season.
It was Verstappen’s best end in Montreal, where F1 said it drew a record 338,000 spectators over a three-day weekend as the series returned to Canada after a two-year pause during the pandemic. Sunday’s crowd enjoyed clear, sunny skies after two days of prolonged rain disqualifying and creating a slide that allowed Alonso – and other drivers, including Hamilton – to take the first place. highest growth this year.
Leclerc bounced back from a 10-point penalty for changing the engine on his Ferrari to finish 5th from 19th. Alpine establishment Ocon was sixth and teammate Alonso, who said he was pleased with the result. fifth place, seventh place.
Valtteri Bottas’s Alfa Romeo ranked eighth and followed by rookie teammate Zhou Guanyu, who finished for the second time this season. Canadian driver Lance Stroll of Aston Martin is the 10th.
Sergio Perez left the race after just nine laps with a gearbox malfunction, Red Bull’s fourth mechanical failure this season between Perez and Verstappen. Eleven laps later, Mick Schumacher stopped on the track – ending the Haas driver’s first F1 scoring attempt.
Haas equalized the best qualifying attempt in team history a day earlier as Kevin Magnussen and Schumacher qualified for fifth and sixth, but the team failed to convert. Magnussen damaged his front wing on the opening lap of Hamilton for a spot and had to stop early for repair; he finished 17th.
Toronto-born Nicholas Latifi, who admitted his seat at Williams was unsafe, finished 16th in the first national championship of his career.
UP NEXT: British Grand Prix at Silverstone on July 3. Hamilton won a year ago in what is considered the Brit’s home race.
