After taking the top pole position for 44th time in his career, world champion Lewis Hamilton finished 2.2 seconds ahead of teammate Nico Rosberg at the end of 70 laps that remained relatively uneventful as the Team Mercedes dominated. With his victory at Montreal’s Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, Hamilton has gone 17 points ahead of Rosberg in the driver’s championship table. Both Hamilton and Rosberg started on the super-soft Pirelli tyres and changed once to soft tyres at their pit-stops, during which Rosberg took a one-lap lead. But Hamilton regained the no.1 position in next to no time to win the race.
At the end of qualifying session on Saturday, Lewis Hamilton tackled creditably with bad weather and ill-timed stoppages. Rosberg suffered a technical issue in Q1 and was dumped out. Sebastian Vettel also failed at the first hurdle and earned a 5-place grid penalty for passing Roberto Merhi under red flags during the earlier FP3 session. During Q2, Rosberg came back strongly and challenged Hamilton. In the end, Hamilton took the pole with Rosberg right behind. Though Vettel had gone out of the reckoning, his Ferrari teammate Kimi Raikkonen took the third place with Williams’ Valtteri Bottas coming fourth. Lotus-Mercedes’ Romain Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado were fifth and sixth, Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg seventh, Red Bull’s Daniil Kyvat and Daniel Ricciardo were eighth and ninth and the other Force India driver Sergio Perez was tenth.
During the main race on Sunday, the two Mercedes drivers pulled away from the pack and got locked at 1-2 over the entire 70-lap race. The race, therefore, remained confined to drivers vying for third to tenth places. Third on the grid at start, Raikkonen held on to his position until the 26th lap, when he went to the pits. But as the Ferrari driver emerged, he lost his place to Williams’ Bottas and with Williams’ driver not yielding until the end; Raikkonen had to be content with his fourth-place finish behind Bottas. Despite starting from the 18th place on the grid, Vettel had remarkable race to finish fifth. The ex-world champion made up five places in the opening laps but he got stuck behind Sauber’s Marcus Ericsson and Williams’ Felipe Massa. After a surprisingly early pit-stop for Vettel engineered by the Ferrari team, the German returned to the track in last place. But he attacked again with soft tyres after 35 laps. As Vettel surged forward, he had a tussle with Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg in the 45th lap, in which Hulkenberg spun through the chicane. Vettel, however, went zooming in to finish fifth at the end. Massa was sixth, followed by Pastor Maldonado. Hulkenberg was eighth, Red Bull’s Daniil Kvyat ninth and Romain Grosjean finished tenth.