That race should have been one for the ages — Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton, the two greatest drivers of the modern era, battling flat-out for a victory at one of the best race circuit’s on the F1 calendar.
Until lap 48, it was. Then Vettel made a mistake and ran across the grass at Turn 4. In rejoining the track, his car blocked Hamilton and forced the world champion to hit the brakes. The controversial time penalty given to Vettel meant he crossed the line in first place, but was immediately shuffled back to second. You only have to read his remarkable outburst afterwards to see just how he felt about it.
Our round-up of the race starts with the men in the stewards’ room.
A sad day for F1: Right now, you should have been reading about how awesome the Vettel-Hamilton fight had been. Take away that penalty and whichever man won would have deserved it and likely rated it among one of their bests.
A penalty should never have been given or not given in relation to how entertaining a fight was, but that’s not what happened here — a victory was cruelly and unfairly denied a driver who otherwise had driven sublimely.
You only had to look at Twitter or listen to the fans after the race to understand how unhappy people were about the outcome. Vettel’s remarkable radio outburst — in which he called the stewards blind and said they had stolen a victory from Ferrari — said it better than anyone else could have.
The official reason for the punishment was that car No.5 had rejoined the track “in an unsafe manner”. However many times you watch an onboard of Vettel’s return to the track it’s hard to know where else he could have gone or what else he could have done — he had to regain control of it as it returned to the tarmac.
The decision infuriated the German and the vast majority of people who saw it. Many said afterwards, if that is a penalty, we might as well all go home and just stop racing.
On what quickly became an afternoon of scolding hot takes, America’s last F1 champion, the legendary Mario Andretti, summed it up best of all on Sunday night.
I think the function of the stewards is to penalize flagrantly unsafe moves not honest mistakes as result of hard racing. What happened at #CanadaGp is not acceptable at this level of our great sport. @F1
— Mario Andretti (@MarioAndretti) June 9, 2019
Seb sees red: Vettel has been criticised for some of his angry outbursts in the past, but obviously on this occasion he was entirely justified.
Initially it looked like he wouldn’t even make the podium ceremony — he parked his car up at the start of the pit-lane, instead of driving all the way down to parc ferme, and stormed to the Ferrari hospitality unit. He was soon convinced to go through the post-race formalities, however farcical it might have been at that point. (Ferrari was fined 1 million Euros at the 2002 Austrian Grand Prix when Michael Schumacher let Rubens Barichello stand on the top step of the podium after their infamous position-swap 100 metres from the line, so the team had good reason to coax him out of hospitality).
Vettel’s theatrical display in parc ferme afterwards — swapping the No.1 sign in front of Hamilton’s car for the No.2 sign — was a moment of light relief on what will otherwise be an afternoon F1 will want to forget about in a hurry.
Hamilton in an awkward position: It was hard not to feel uncomfortable for Lewis Hamilton after the race. Sure, he looked happy about winning, but I’m never sure how people expect someone to behave in that situation. Some suggested he was fishing for a penalty directly afterwards but, until the podium procession had finished he had only seen the incident once, at racing speed, from the confines of his cockpit.
Vettel and Hamilton both showed each other an admirable amount of respect after the race and the Ferrari driver was quick to defend the man who inherited his win from the chorus of boos: “People shouldn’t boo at Lewis because I think he saw what was going on and I don’t think there was any intention to be in his harms way. I had trouble to stay on track.
“I think if anything they should boo at these funny decisions.”
Amen, brother.
Season over?: A fifth win from seven races for Hamilton makes for sad reading. A Ferrari win wouldn’t necessarily have meant it was game-on in terms of the title fight, such is the reigning world champion’s current advantage, but it would have at least changed the narrative a bit and given us reason to hope for an improved season. The events of Sunday evening were so deflating that right now it’s hard to get even remotely excited about the long run of European races which are scattered throughout June and July.
Away from the controversy
Some other things happened, too. Here’s a quick run-down of some other talking points from the race.
Magnussen gets a slap on the wrist: Guenther Steiner deserves his own radio station. The Haas boss opened up his radio channel to slap Kevin Magnussen on the wrist for his complaints late in the race.
Running two laps down, Magnussen told his pit-wall: “This is the worst experience I have ever had, in any race car, ever.”
Magnussen had started from the pit-lane after his car was rebuilt overnight, following his heavy crash into the Wall of Champions in qualifying.
Race engineer Gary Gannon reminded the Dane of that, saying: “None of this are happy about this pace. The guys stayed up all night…”
Steiner then felt the need to intervene, opening the radio channel to say: “It’s not a nice experience, but enough is enough.”
Steiner told Romain Grosjean to “shut up” during last year’s U.S. Grand Prix. The words he used this time were different, but the message was exactly the same.
Bottas well beaten: While most will remember this race for what happened out in front, Valtteri Bottas might well remember the Canadian Grand Prix as the one where his championship hopes unravelled. Finishing fourth in Canada was already a bad result before Hamilton’s name was moved from P2 to P1 on the final classification.
Bottas’ bad weekend started with a spin in Q3, which left him under pressure and meant he qualified down the order — he started P6. This weekend was more points lost to Hamilton in the championship fight and, with a long run of races coming up, he’ll be worried about the Englishman recording the sort of run of wins which has propelled him to titles in the past few seasons.
Gasly’s worst weekend:With Max Verstappen qualifying out of position, Pierre Gasly had a real chance at flipping the script at Red Bull and getting his season back on track. Instead, he had a dismal afternoon — he was stuck behind Lance Stroll (who had an excellent race to ninth posiiton, by the way) for the first stint and then finished a distant eighth behind the two Renault cars.
Gasly looks to be in real trouble at the moment. Toro Rosso’s Daniil Kvyat is starting to really find form as well — I wonder how long before Helmut Marko starts wondering whether the Russian is worthy of another shot at a stint with the senior Red Bull team.
Renault on form: Daniel Ricciardo and Nico Hulkenberg came home sixth and seventh in what has to be the most encouraging result in the French manufacturer’s current stint in F1. Hulkenberg was upset at behind told to hold station behind Ricciardo in the closing stages, but that shouldn’t take the gloss off this result. Ricciardo was superb and turned in some great defensive driving on Bottas — Hulkenberg was also class, delivering a brilliant long stint on the marshmallow-like soft tyres to start the race. After a difficult start to the year, the future is starting to look very bright for the guys in yellow and black.