Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel tried hard to lose Sunday’s Canadian Grand Prix – he brushed one of the ever-present concrete barriers and the Circuit de Gilles Villeneuve on lap 10 and nearly threw everything away with another ‘blue’ going into turn one on lap 52 another - but such was his commanding pace, the German was able to overcome those setbacks and cruise to the chequered flag ahead of the hard-racing duo of Fernando Alonso (Ferrari) and Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes-Benz).
Despite numerous tyre strategies at play, one again the on-track action was less than stellar until Alonso and Hamilton started tussling for second position late in the race. Alonso came from 10 seconds down to launch some fierce attacks on Hamilton who suffered badly when he tried to lap the other Ferrari of Felip Massa and the Force India of Adrian Sutil.
In fact stumbling back-markers were a theme in Canada with Australia’s Mark Webber seemingly set to finish in the top three until he tangled with the slow Caterham of Gierdo van der Garde on lap 36 and struggled from then with a damaged front wing. Webber eventually crossed the line in fourth place ahead of Nico Rosberg’s Mercedes-Benz.
There was a tragedy too towards to end of the Canadian Grand Prix with a race marshal fatally injured. The marshal was walking alongside a heavy duty crane which was removing the crashed Sauber Of Esteban Gutierrez when he tripped and fell under one of the crane’s wheels.
So Vettel left Canada sitting on-top of the championship with 132 points, ahead of Alonso (96), Kimi Raikkonen (88), Hamilton (77) and Webber (69).
The other major F1 news from Canada was some new specification Pirelli tyres which teams tested during Friday’s free practice. Pirelli says the performance of the new medium compound tyres will be virtually identical but construction changes should see less instances of delamination when they debut next month at the British Grand Prix.
