Nothing was left behind on the Gilles Villeneuve circuit. He negotiated all the angles with aggressiveness and the right dose of daring, on many occasions bordering on disaster. At times he dreamed of the 33rd. victory, just a handful of seconds away, but finally Fernando Alonso had to settle for second place and kneel before an unapproachable Max Verstappen in the Canadian GP, ??from start to finish in first position. The Dutchman achieved his 41st victory, with which he equals the mythical Ayrton Senna, and number 100 for the Red Bull team.
The ogre of the World Championship, the leader of the championship, left the excitement for the other two places on the podium, fought until the last laps by Alonso and Lewis Hamilton, as in the old days. “I couldn’t dream of reaching these numbers. We continue to enjoy it”, said the Dutchman, who was persecuted endlessly by Alonso. “I had to push the whole race, I didn’t have a relaxed lap. It has been a demanding race, ”the Aston Martin explained on his part, who saw how his plan went awry when the traffic lights went out.
Hamilton easily overtook the Spaniard at the start, who had to defend himself in the following corners from Russell’s harassment. The Spaniard was sandwiched between the Mercedes, pressured from behind by the young English driver and looking for a gap to overtake the seven-time world champion. Meanwhile, Verstappen was lost on the horizon, until Russell burst one of his tires against one of the walls. The remains of the car were left on the track, forcing the safety car to come out. Almost the entire grid took advantage of the moment to stop in the pits and put on hard tyres, except for the Ferraris, which were far behind, which risked keeping the medium.
Hamilton’s stop was especially slow, a circumstance that Alonso almost took advantage of to overtake the Briton in pit lane. The Aston Martin and the Mercedes, which came out on par, nearly collided. The man from Oviedo could not advance to Hamilton at that moment, but he did take advantage of the better pace of the green car, with aerodynamic innovations in Canada, to overtake Hamilton on lap 22, who tried unsuccessfully to return the maneuver at the next angle.
After a lot of rowing, Alonso was already where he had planned, in second position and putting pressure on Verstappen from a distance. The Spaniard chained fast laps that, however, did not allow him to make visual contact with the Red Bull, always with a minimum margin of four seconds. stabilized the distance later in more than five seconds. ‘Mad Max’ had the situation under control again.
Hamilton, who was the first of the front drivers to make the second stop, forced Alonso to enter the pit lane early to avoid being hit by the Englishman. The Aston Martin man would have stretched the life of his tires to ride soft in the last few laps, but he was forced to use the hard ones when lap 42 was over. “I want to win this race,” an insistent Alonso confessed to his team over the radio . The Spaniard continued to squeeze his car in search of every tenth, in the same way that Hamilton did himself in the wake of the Oviedo.
Behind the noble squares, a constant guerrilla warfare, although without notable incidents. Sainz tried an undercut entering the pits before his teammate, but the strategy was unsuccessful and Leclerc kept fourth place. In any case, the Ferrari plan worked, which went from 10th. and 11th. place at the exit to be seen in the front. Sergio Pérez also saved the situation, sixth after starting 12th. For their part, De Vries and Magnussen came close to catastrophe after going off the track and being forced to make a reckless reverse to return to the asphalt, just as Alonso and Hamilton passed by.
The man from Mercedes took advantage of his medium tire to get closer to an Alonso who did not worry in the least. “Leave it to me,” said the Spaniard on the radio, who picked up the pace when the Briton approached to just over a second, just before he entered the DRS zone. Alonso widened the gap and sealed second place with five laps to go, and any possibility of attacking the victory was impossible, in the hands of an impeccable Verstappen who only made a slight mistake by going over one of the curbs with excessive aggressiveness. He laughed when explaining the Dutchman’s mistake on the radio, a talent without brakes who only manages to tickle an eternal Alonso.
1.Max Verstappen (NED/Red Bull) 305.270 km en 1 h 33:58.348
2.Fernando Alonso (ESP/Aston Martin-Mercedes) at 9,570
3.Lewis Hamilton (GBR/Mercedes) a 14.168
4.Charles Leclerc (MON/Ferrari) at 18,648
5.Carlos Sainz Jr (ESP/Ferrari) at 21,540
6.Sergio Pérez (MEX/Red Bull) at 51,028
7. Alexander Albon (THA/Williams-Mercedes) at 1:00.813
8.Esteban Ocon (FRA/Alpine-Renault) in 1:01.692
9.Lance Stroll (CAN/Aston Martin-Mercedes) a 1:04.402
10.Valtteri Bottas (FIN/Alfa Romeo-Ferrari) at 1:04.432
11.Oscar Piastri (AUS/McLaren-Mercedes) at 1:05.101
12.Pierre Gasly (FRA/Alpine-Renault) a 1:05.249
13.Lando Norris (GBR/McLaren-Mercedes) 1:08.363
14. Yuki Tsunoda (JPN/AlphaTauri-Red Bull) a 1:13.423
15.Nico Hülkenberg (GER/Haas-Ferrari) a 1 Vuelta
16. Zhou Guanyu (CHN/Alfa Romeo-Ferrari) a 1 vuelta
17. Kevin Magnussen (DEN/Haas-Ferrari) has 1 lap
18.Nyck de Vries (NED/AlphaTauri-Red Bull) a 1 vuelta
