Lewis Hamilton scored a dominant lights-to-flag victory at the Canadian Grand Prix, significant reducing the points lead to title rival Sebastian Vettel.
The Mercedes driver lead away from pole position and remained unchallenged for most of the 70-lap race to cross the line 19.7 seconds clear of his team-mate Valtteri Bottas.
Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo completed the podium, with Vettel recovering to fourth position having dropped to last after sustaining damage at the start.
That happened when Max Verstappen made a storming getaway from fifth, going around the outside of Vettel at Turn 1 to take second behind Hamilton.
But with Bottas simultaneously attacking Vettel on the inside, the Ferrari found itself squeezed and damaged its front wing on Verstappen’s left-rear wheel.
Vettel continued initially but was soon forced to pit when part of the front wing broke off, dropping him to P18 and last.
The race had been neutralised on the opening lap, when the safety car was called into action following a collision between Carlos Sainz and Romain Grosjean.
Sainz appeared to move across on Grosjean on the straight after Turn 2, causing contact that pitched the Toro Rosso into a spin approaching Turn 3.
The out-of-control Sainz violently collected an innocent Felipe Massa. Both were out but unhurt, while Grosjean had to pit for a new front wing.
Hamilton held off an attack from Verstappen at the safety car restart but that challenge ended very soon when the Red Bull pulled off track at Turn 2 with a mechanical problem, prompting a virtual safety car.
Bottas was promoted to second place but was unable to provide a challenge to his team-mate. Hamilton had this race in his control and recorded his third win of the season and sixth in Canada.
He moved to within 12 points of championship leader Vettel as Mercedes achieved its first one-two of the 2017 campaign.
While the Mercedes had a trouble-free race with a one-stop strategy, Ferrari made a mid-race switch to a two-stopper for its out-of-position drivers.
Kimi Raikkonen had dropped behind Sergio Perez’s Force India when he made a mistake in the early laps.
Vettel made rapid progress through the midfielders and was closing on his team-mate into the second half of the Canadian Grand Prix when their strategies changed.
Raikkonen was first to make an extra stop and initially stayed ahead of Vettel, only to run off-track at the final chicane when his car developed brake problems that left him limping to the finish.
That left Vettel clear to chase down a podium battle in which Ricciardo was hanging on ahead of the Force Indias.
Esteban Ocon was catching Perez after making a later pitstop, prompting Force India to ask them to swap places.
Perez insisted the team let them race and it proved costly as their wheel-to-wheel fight allowed Vettel to get a run and dive down the inside of Ocon into the first corner in a bold move.
While Ocon sliding over the run-off, Vettel continued his chase after Perez, running off track briefly at Turns 8 and 9 but then making a pass stick at the final chicane for fourth.
Despite an angry Ocon’s best efforts, Perez clung on to fifth position.
Raikkonen nursed his Ferrari home in seventh, just ahead of Nico Hulkenberg’s Renault.
Lance Stroll scored the first points of his Formula 1 career with ninth in front of his home crowd.
The Williams driver earned that by battling through the midfield after a relatively early stop.
A late pitstop meant Fernando Alonso ran as high as fourth, despite losing ground taking to the grass to avoid the Sainz and Massa collision on lap one.
Even after being passed by Stroll’s more powerful Williams, Alonso stuck with the rookie and was on course to score McLaren-Honda’s first point of 2017 only to retire with yet another Honda problem on the penultimate lap.
While Alonso climbed into the grandstand to meet fans, his retirement elevated the recovering Grosjean to the final point – just ahead of Jolyon Palmer and Kevin Magnussen – who lost ground with a penalty for overtaking Stoffel Vandoorne under virtual safety car conditions.
Toro Rosso’s Daniil Kvyat had a crazy race – failing to get away for the formation lap, then being given a drive-through penalty for regaining his grid slot, a further time penalty as the race stewards deemed their first sanction was “incorrect” and then having a chaotic pitstop just after complaining of vibrations. He ultimately retired from last place.
This was the perfect weekend for Lewis Hamilton. Equalling his hero’s qualifying achievement with 65 pole positions and scoring a grand slam in the race by leading every lap and setting the quickest time. Just 12 points separate the two title rivals. It’s game on for the championship.
Canadian Grand Prix, race results after 70 laps:
1 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1h33m05.154s
2 Valtteri Bottas Mercedes 19.783s
3 Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull-Renault 35.297s
4 Sebastian Vettel Ferrari 35.907s
5 Sergio Perez Force India-Mercedes 40.476s
6 Esteban Ocon Force India-Mercedes 40.716s
7 Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari 58.632s
8 Nico Hulkenberg Renault 1m00.374s
9 Lance Stroll Williams-Mercedes 1 Lap
10 Romain Grosjean Haas-Ferrari 1 Lap
11 Jolyon Palmer Renault 1 Lap
12 Kevin Magnussen Haas-Ferrari 1 Lap
13 Marcus Ericsson Sauber-Ferrari 1 Lap
14 Stoffel Vandoorne McLaren-Honda 1 Lap
15 Pascal Wehrlein Sauber-Ferrari 2 Laps
16 Fernando Alonso McLaren-Honda Engine
– Daniil Kvyat Toro Rosso-Renault Wheel
– Max Verstappen Red Bull-Renault Battery
– Carlos Sainz Toro Rosso-Renault Collision
– Felipe Massa Williams-Mercedes Collision
Drivers’ standings:
1 Sebastian Vettel 141
2 Lewis Hamilton 129
3 Valtteri Bottas 93
4 Kimi Raikkonen 73
5 Daniel Ricciardo 67
6 Max Verstappen 45
7 Sergio Perez 44
8 Esteban Ocon 27
9 Carlos Sainz 25
10 Felipe Massa 20
11 Nico Hulkenberg 18
12 Romain Grosjean 10
13 Kevin Magnussen 5
14 Pascal Wehrlein 4
15 Daniil Kvyat 4
16 Lance Stroll 2
17 Jolyon Palmer 0
18 Marcus Ericsson 0
19 Fernando Alonso 0
20 Antonio Giovinazzi 0
21 Stoffel Vandoorne 0
Constructors’ standings:
1 Mercedes 222
2 Ferrari 214
3 Red Bull-Renault 112
4 Force India-Mercedes 71
5 Toro Rosso-Renault 29
6 Williams-Mercedes 22
7 Renault 18
8 Haas-Ferrari 15
9 Sauber-Ferrari 4
10 McLaren-Honda 0
Canadian Grand Prix race review as reported by Formula1.com.
Lewis Hamilton stormed to his sixth Canadian Grand Prix victory on Sunday, leading home team mate Valtteri Bottas as Mercedes dominated in Montreal. Third place went to Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo after Ferrari hit trouble early on, with Sebastian Vettel battling back to fourth, his lead in the drivers’ championship cut to from 25 to 12 points.
It was massively windy in Montreal all day, and that played havoc with the cars’ aerodynamic stability in the race. Vettel picked up front wing damage almost instantly when Max Verstappen made a blinding start from fifth on the grid to go round the outside of him into second place by Turn 1, as Bottas went for the inside to grab third.
Further round the lap, exiting Turn 2, Romain Grosjean and Carlos Sainz tangled, the Haas spinning the Toro Rosso down the grass on the inside of the track until it collected the innocent Felipe Massa’s Williams in the chicane that follows. Exit two cars on the spot, as Grosjean limped back to the pits for a new nose. Out came the safety car.
On the restart on lap four Hamilton pulled clear and thereafter simply controlled the race all afternoon, pitting to switch his ultrasoft Pirelli tyres for supersofts on the 32nd of the 70 laps.
Bottas’ way to second was smoothed when the unfortunate Verstappen’s Red Bull simply stopped in Turn 2 on the 11th lap, but the Finn pitted for soft tyres on the 23rd lap, and struggled to hold pace with Hamilton thereafter as he steadily dropped away after keeping him honest for a while.
Meanwhile, Ricciardo maintained fourth place ahead of Perez, Raikkonen and Ocon. Raikkonen pitted first, for supersofts on lap 17. Ricciardo went for softs on 18, and Perez for supersofts on 19. Force India kept the ultrasoft-shod Ocon out until the 32nd lap, by which time he was running second to Hamilton. The stop dropped him back to sixth, but that became fifth when Raikkonen pitted again for ultrasofts on the 41st lap.
Now Perez began to hound Ricciardo, but Ocon had ideas of his own as Raikkonen was recovering on the softer tyres and Vettel was charging his way through the field. With 20 laps to go Force India were asking Perez to let Ocon by on his 13-lap fresher tyres, with the promise that positions would be reversed if his attack was unsuccessful, but the Mexican wasn’t having it and begged to be allowed to race. Meanwhile, the Ferraris were getting closer and closer.
The red cars switched places on the 60th lap, when Raikkonen – complaining of brake issues – ran wide down the inside of the kerbs in the final corner, and Vettel’s task was made easier when Perez resisted a side-by-side challenge from Ocon going into that corner on the 65th lap. As the Frenchman lost momentum, Vettel overtook him going into Turn 1 on the 66th lap, obliging Ocon to run wide into the run-off area to avoid contact, when he found Perez slamming the door as he tried to put the Ferrari inside it.
Perez actually made it easier for Vettel to pass him than he had his team mate, two laps later in the final corner, and the two pink cars went on to finish side-by-side, two tenths of a second apart in fifth and sixth, as Vettel just failed to dislodge the Red Bull that took the podium they had coveted. It was Ricciardo’s third successive visit to it.
Outside the top ten, Renault’s Jolyon Palmer held on to 11th by a fraction from Haas’s Kevin Magnussen, who was penalised for overtaking under the virtual safety car, as the Saubers of Marcus Ericsson and Pascal Wehrlein sandwiched Stoffel Vandoorne’s McLaren for 13th and 15th places.
That came after Fernando Alonso’s McLaren quit on him with two laps to go when the team’s first point of the season was in his hand.
The other retirement was Daniil Kvyat, who was handed a drive-through penalty after the team incorrectly told him he could regain his starting place after he initially failed to get away from the grid on the formation lap. Later the stewards decided they’d given him the wrong penalty and gave him a 10-second time one instead
The Montreal result reverses Hamilton’s misfortunes from Monaco, and indicates that Mercedes – who reclaim their lead in the constructors’ standings over Ferrari – have a handle on their tyre problems at last, keeping the mighty title fight right on the boil.
By winning the Canadian Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton has commented that this was “a great blow to Ferrari”. Motorsport.com has the news story.
Canadian Grand Prix winner Lewis Hamilton believes the outcome of the race will have served as a “great blow” to rival team Ferrari, which finished off the podium with both cars for the first time in F1 2017.
Mercedes driver Hamilton dominated proceedings in the 70-lap Circuit Gilles Villeneuve event, leading home Valtteri Bottas in a comfortable 1-2 for the Silver Arrows.
The German manufacturer’s race was made easier by a troubled outing for Ferrari, as championship leader Sebastian Vettel could only recover to fourth after opening-lap front wing damage – and teammate Kimi Raikkonen had to settle for seventh due to late-race brake woes.
It proved a stark contrast to the preceding Monaco F1 race from two weeks ago, where Ferrari managed an easy 1-2 and Hamilton was only seventh.
Celebrating his sixth Canadian GP win, Hamilton said: “It has been an incredible weekend, I couldn’t be happier, firstly for the team.
“To have come away from Monaco, really, everyone scratching their heads and wanting to work and pull together, and we did.
“In these five years [with Mercedes], I’ve not seen the team pull so well together and work towards the same cause, to understand the car and come here and deliver what we delivered – a great blow to Ferrari.
“Valtteri did a fantastic job this weekend, our first 1-2 for the team, solid points, so well done.”
Having cut Vettel’s championship lead down to 12 points, Hamilton says Mercedes is now back where it needs to be to sustain its title challenge.
“[Mercedes] did such great work, analysing where we went wrong, all the points – this is where we went wrong and this is what we need to do to fix it – it was just amazing teamwork,” Hamilton said. “We came here, the car is back to where it should be. Doesn’t mean it’ll be like that every time.
“Although Monaco would’ve been a good one to win, I am happy it happened early in the season. It should put us in a good position from here moving forwards.”
Bottas, whose second-place finish helped Mercedes leapfrog Ferrari in the constructors’ standings, said: “Like Lewis said, I am also really happy for us as a team, impressive to see in only two weeks what we have been able to do and improve with everything in the team.
“The 1-2 here is amazing and we are glad to be on top of that.”
The Finn finished 20 seconds behind his teammate, having opted to do his final stint on softs, whereas Hamilton had gone for the ultrasoft compound.
“[The soft] was not quite as good as I was expecting so pace was missing. Still, I knew what I had to in the end, bring the car home and get the points.”
Championship leader Sebastian Vettel felt that Max Verstappen was “lucky” following an incident at Turn 1 on the opening lap. Motorsport.com has the details.
Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel felt Red Bull rival Max Verstappen was “lucky” to avoid a puncture at the start of the Canadian Grand Prix when the Dutchman “ran over our front wing”.
Vettel lined up second on the grid but was down to fourth at Turn 1, passed by Mercedes driver Valtteri Bottas on the inside and Verstappen on the outside – with the Red Bull’s right-rear wheel clipping off a piece of the Ferrari’s front wing.
The damage was sufficient to force Vettel into an unscheduled stop later on, which left him in a recovery drive – as he climbed back up from 18th to eventually finish fourth.
Asked whether Verstappen’s move was overly optimistic after the race, Vettel said: “I haven’t seen from his point of view, but… obviously I wasn’t expecting, I was focusing on Valtteri, I didn’t really have anywhere to go because Lewis [Hamilton] was in front – so if I brake later, then I run into Lewis.
“And then Max, I think, took his chance on the outside and ran over our front wing.
“I don’t think he did it on purpose because normally you get a puncture, so in that regard he was lucky that he didn’t get one.”
Verstappen’s escape from the Turn 1 incident ended up counting for little, as a battery issue forced him to pull over when running second on lap 11.
Vettel regretted that he and the team did not realise the extent of the front wing damage right away, meaning that he’d passed up the opportunity to have it changed during the early safety car period, triggered by the crash involving Carlos Sainz and Felipe Massa.
He explained: “The first lap of the race usually is quite messy because the tyres are cold, especially today was windy and so on. I felt something out of Turn 6, 7, and then there was a safety car.
“I asked to check and then behind the safety car, with the damage, was so slow that you couldn’t really feel it.”
Vettel said realised “straight away” that the damage was too severe after the race was restarted, and he had to come into the pits during green-flag running, losing more time than he would’ve in pitting under safety car.
“We should have spotted [the damage] and got a free pitstop. In the end we did it when everybody was back at the pace and we had to catch up for a couple of laps first.”
Vettel had an eventful race from that point on, fighting through the pack and eventually arriving at the back of a podium fight that featured Daniel Ricciardo and the two Force Indias.
He couldn’t make find a way past initially but caught up with the group again after a late switch to ultrasofts.
The Ferrari driver dispatched Force India’s Esteban Ocon with a Turn 1 dive on lap 66 and then eased past the Frenchman’s teammate Perez on lap 68 at the chicane – but he believes he could’ve scored a podium finish if he’d made the overtakes sooner, having finished 0.6s off third-placed Ricciardo.
Talking about the Ocon move, he said: [It was] full risk, full on. I wanted to get past.
“They had a run at each other into Turn 13-14 and I focused on the exit, which was good – and I just, yeah, I committed halfway down the straight and I said ‘I go down the inside no matter what’.
“And Esteban had a bit of a wobble and I reacted to that and it was really slippery on the inside, so was quite tricky, I just made Turn 1, but [it] was fine.
“I picked up a lot of dirt and I lost a little bit too much time on that lap because I thought I could go straight to move on to Sergio.
“But then I nearly lost the car, nearly went into the wall in Turn 4, because I slid and lost the rear, so I had to back off. Then I nearly lost it fighting back, I was late into Turn 8.
“I think [a podium] was there but, as I just touched on, we lost a bit too much time fighting through the Force Indias.”
Force India’s Esteban Ocon has hit out at his teammate Sergio Perez after a frantic conclusion to the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal.
The team had been challenging Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo for a podium finish, but its race descended into a civil war in the closing stages – which allowed Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel to pass both of them.
On multiple occasions previously, Perez’s engineer suggested swapping places with Ocon – who was on fresher tyres – to allow him to attack Ricciardo ahead. But Perez disagreed, and resolutely kept his position.
This backfired on the team when he dropped out of DRS range to Ricciardo in the closing stages, which left them prone to attack from Vettel – who was on a two-stop strategy and using fresh ultrasoft tyres.
Perez continued to defend hard against Ocon’s attack, which helped Vettel pass Ocon into Turn 1. Vettel then outbraked Perez a couple of laps later.
On the final lap, Perez aggressively protected his position against Ocon into the final chicane, taking the chequered flag a quarter of a second ahead in fifth.
On his in-lap, Ocon radioed: “He cannot do that. He cannot do that. He moved at the last moment. What is this? He cannot do that. This is not fair racing at all.
“This is not fair guys. This is not fair at all.”
Source: Motorsport.com
There was a strong words between the Force India drivers following a tense battle in the race, with Esteban Ocon commenting that he wasn’t happy with his team-mate not moving over. Sergio Perez fired back insisting he’s a team player. Motorsport.com has the story.
Force India’s Sergio Perez says he’s driving for his team’s best interest, rather than focusing on his own, following teammate Esteban Ocon’s complaint about his driving tactics in the Canadian Grand Prix.
Perez’s defence of fifth place in Montreal had Ocon ranting on the radio, and his earlier decision not to follow a team suggestion to move aside and allow his fresher-tyred teammate to attack third-placed Daniel Ricciardo also came in for criticism for some quarters.
When asked after the race by NBC’s Will Buxton if he was “racing for Sergio Perez or Force India?” Perez replied: “Of course, I’m racing for my team.
“The best I can do is give plenty of points to them, as I have in the past. I think we got the most we could, and Esteban had many laps to overtake me, but he was not close at all.
“I couldn’t get Ricciardo, so I don’t think he would have got him. Daniel was very strong on traction.
“When the team asked me to give the position to Esteban we were about to lap some cars ahead of us. And I thought that Daniel might get traffic, and I only need two to three tenths to get the opportunity on him, and I could see he was struggling and I knew the Ferraris were coming.”
Perez also defended his tactics on the approach to the final corner, which enraged Ocon, who alleged: “He did a very late move at very high speed which could have left us both out of the race.”
Perez’s defence of fifth place in Montreal had Ocon ranting on the radio, and his earlier decision not to follow a team suggestion to move aside and allow his fresher-tyred teammate to attack third-placed Daniel Ricciardo also came in for criticism for some quarters.
When asked after the race by NBC’s Will Buxton if he was “racing for Sergio Perez or Force India?” Perez replied: “Of course, I’m racing for my team.
“The best I can do is give plenty of points to them, as I have in the past. I think we got the most we could, and Esteban had many laps to overtake me, but he was not close at all.
“I couldn’t get Ricciardo, so I don’t think he would have got him. Daniel was very strong on traction.
“When the team asked me to give the position to Esteban we were about to lap some cars ahead of us. And I thought that Daniel might get traffic, and I only need two to three tenths to get the opportunity on him, and I could see he was struggling and I knew the Ferraris were coming.”
Perez also defended his tactics on the approach to the final corner, which enraged Ocon, who alleged: “He did a very late move at very high speed which could have left us both out of the race.”
Perez responded: “I think I just defended the position as I would do to anyone – I just moved once. I protected my inside line, because Sebastian [Vettel], the lap before, just went past on my inside.
“I made a move to protect that. If he was fast enough, he’d have gone through on the outside. I was just trying to protect my position.”
Force India’s chief operating officer Otmar Szafnauer said Perez had done nothing untoward in the team’s eyes when he opted not to allow Ocon through as it had suggested.
“We talked about swapping them around, but Sergio wanted some time as Ricciardo was coming up to lapped traffic,” he told Sky Sports F1.
“We agreed to that, and while we gave him that time, the Ferraris caught up. It takes two to three seconds to swap ’em, so we then didn’t have that time.
“Remember, Sergio had fresh tyres way back, and he couldn’t get by him. So would it be the same thing with Ocon… I’m not sure.
“We talked about it on the pitwall, we thought it was a good idea. But we let Sergio have a go, because he’s a great overtaker.”
This was a frustrating race for Daniil Kvyat and he commented that the Formula 1 stewarding was a “stupid circus”. Motorsport.com has the details.
Toro Rosso driver Daniil Kvyat described Formula 1 stewarding as a “stupid f****** circus” and strongly criticised race director Charlie Whiting after a double Canadian Grand Prix penalty.
Kvyat’s car failed to get away at the start of the Montreal formation lap, but he then contravened F1 regulations by reclaiming his 11th position on the grid.
The rules only permit a driver slow away to return to their grid slot if they can recover all the positions by the first safety car line, otherwise they must start from the pitlane.
Kvyat was initially given a drive-through penalty but the stewards later announced it should have been a 10-second stop/go penalty so made him take that penalty too.
“They have a job to do which is not so difficult in my opinion and they cannot do the job properly,” said Kvyat. “They were clearly sleeping today in their office, so maybe they needed some coffee there.
“They should cancel this stupid rule. Who is this rule for? Are we taxi drivers here or Formula 1 drivers? I don’t understand this. It’s a circus, a stupid f****** circus.
“I will go and talk to Charlie. It’s annoying me, it’s really annoying me. A simple job, and he can’t even do that job properly.
“Maybe it’s better to go in the back room because now the heat is up for me I will not want to say anything wrong to any of them and I’m not really sure it’s Charlie.
“I want to understand first of all who does this job. All I know is our team manager was for 10 laps arguing with the FIA that we shouldn’t get another additional penalty and they said ‘no, sorry, we have this’.”
When Kvyat took the extra 10s penalty, a wheelnut problem caused a severe pitstop delay and prompted his subsequent retirement.
Williams technical chief Paddy Lowe has revealed that Lance Stroll’s first points of the season felt so much like a win to him that he mistakenly started heading to the podium after the race.
Stroll recovered from another difficult qualifying performance – having got knocked out in Q1 to line up 17th in Canada – to deliver a mature charge through the field to finish ninth.
And on the back of early season frustrations, and mounting criticisms about whether he should have been signed by Williams, Lowe said the importance of the result should not be underestimated.
“You couldn’t overstate it, to be honest, on so many different levels,” said Lowe, when asked by Motorsport.com about Stroll’s performance.
“The way he drove today and the result he got, it feels like a race win.
“Actually coming off the pit wall, with the instinct of how I felt, I started heading towards the podium!
“It was only ninth, but it seriously felt like a race win because we know it has been a very, very difficult introduction to the sport for him.”
Stroll’s ongoing struggles earlier in the weekend had prompted some intense talks between Lowe and the Canadian driver’s father Lawrence in Williams offices on Saturday evening.
But, although accepting things on track had not gone to plan, Lowe said the team had always remained convinced that Stroll had talent that was not being untapped by the nature of the 2017 cars and tyres.
“We have all felt for him especially in the team, willing him to get better and to make the progress,” added Lowe.
“I think he went out there today and showed that he could drive. The talent was all there, the race craft was fantastic. Those points didn’t fall in his lap, he went and fought for them.
“He handled some pretty tricky situations, like the traffic in Turn 1. There was lots of stuff that could have easily been mishandled.
“The benefits are immeasurable – he is going to have himself so much more confidence that he now knows what it takes.
“You know they say in this sport that when you win your first race, all the rest of them are so much easier. I am sure it is the same with points. I hope we will see that. He is out of the starting blocks and we will see that in play now.”
Source: Motorsport.com
Yet again this was a difficult race for McLaren-Honda and star driver Fernando Alonso. The double world champion lacked speed and admitted it the straightline speed deficit was “dangerous” compared to his rivals. Motorsport.com has the news story.
McLaren-Honda’s straightline speed deficit to rival Formula 1 teams in the Canadian Grand Prix was “dangerous”, according to Fernando Alonso.
Speed trap figures in Montreal on race day put Alonso 16mph down on the benchmark 213mph achieved by Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari, with the second McLaren of Stoffel Vandoorne faring better by reaching 205mph.
Alonso rose up the order by staying out until lap 42 of the 70-lap race on his first set of tyres, but found himself repeatedly overtaken by other cars before an apparent engine failure took him out of 10th place with two laps to go.
“The race itself was already hard enough given the lack of power,” said Alonso. “They were passing us in the middle of the straights and sometimes it was even dangerous with such a speed difference.”
With his car having already exceeded its maximum allowance of multiple power unit components – prompting a grid penalty for his Monaco GP stand-in Jenson Button a fortnight ago – Alonso is certain Sunday’s failure will leave him at the back of the grid for the next race in Azerbaijan.
“It is not only that we lost a point today and we lost another race, we will start last in Baku because Jenson changed the power unit in Monaco and started last,” he said.
“Here we lost a power unit and in Baku we will start last again. The situation is definitely not nice.”
Alonso’s teammate Stoffel Vandoorne briefly got up to ninth amid the incidents and early pitstops of the race’s first quarter, before falling away to finish 14th.
“It was a difficult race but I think we more or less knew that before starting the race,” said Vandoorne. “We saw that on the straights, and also the amount of fuel-saving we had to do today really hurt us.
“We were a bit of a sitting duck today. We don’t have the power to defend. We have to invent some tricks to keep cars behind and then everything starts to become very difficult.
“When you’re out there there’s not much you can do. You can moan about it, OK. But in the end, I’m trying to get on with my job. I just hope there will be improvements soon so we can actually start racing with the others.”
After his late retirement, Alonso surprised the crowd by climbing into a grandstand.
He explained that this was a spontaneous gesture that started with the idea of just throwing his gloves to fans.
“I hoped to give the gloves to the guys there but the grandstand was too far away so I thought it will not get there if I throw the gloves,” said Alonso.
“So I thought I’d go up and throw the gloves, but once I was there I nearly couldn’t leave. We have so much support from the fans here every time we come to Canada so I felt I should give something back.”