Daniel Ricciardo played his cards to perfection to take his maiden F1 victory in a Canadian Grand Prix that came to a nail-bitingly spectacular crescendo.
With no more than 10 seconds covering the top eight with 10 laps to go, it was almost anybody’s race for the taking and predicting a result was nigh on impossible. However, Ricciardo proved to be the only driver capable of making the decisive moves, coming through from P3 to P1 in the final four laps. The Australian’s first comment on the podium was that “this is ridiculous”, which just about sums up the chaos, tension and suspense of the final part of the race.
With 10 laps to go, it was Nico Rosberg’s Mercedes in the lead, despite being severely hamstrung by a power deficiency that had already led to team-mate Lewis Hamilton’s retirement. Sergio Perez found himself second through a one-stop strategy, bottling up both Red Bulls and the stunningly quick Felipe Massa who was on tyres that were 12 laps younger than his rivals.
Proceedings stabilized for a few laps, but someone was always going to go for the jugular at some point. Popular opinion was that Massa would be that man, but the Williams driver couldn’t make a move stick around the robust defence of Sebastian Vettel, despite trying vigorously lap after lap.
And so it was Ricciardo who successfully moved first, with a late lunge on Perez at the first corner. The Australian only just held on to his car through turn two, but crucially, made the move stick. He then began to reel in Rosberg at a rapid rate, overtaking the Mercedes on the back straight with two laps to go.
Behind that, all hell broke loose on the last lap. With Vettel also getting by Perez, the frustrated Massa looked to make a move going into turn one. However, what appeared to be a slight move right under braking by Perez resulted in contact between the Force India and the Williams, firing both cars into the barriers at high speed, and almost taking Vettel with them. As such, the last half lap of the race was completed under the safety car.
All that mayhem meant Vettel came home third, ahead of the elevated Jenson Button, Nico Hulkenberg and Fernando Alonso, who until that point, looked like filling the minor points positions. Valterri Bottas, Jean-Eric Vergne, Kevin Magnussen and Kimi Raikkonen completed the top ten.
The race started far better than it would end for Mercedes, with Rosberg assuming the lead off the line, and Hamilton eventually taking P2, despite spending 10 laps behind Vettel after the German got down the inside at turn one on the first lap.
The race spent seven laps under the safety car as marshals worked to clear up the intra-team crash between the Marussias at turn three, where Max Chilton’s sideways moment ended up with his team-mate Jules Bianchi fired backwards into the turn three wall.
Once underway again, Hamilton restored the Mercedes one-two, with no change through the first round of stops. Hamilton then closed in on Rosberg after their stops, getting close enough to try a move on a couple of occasions, and in one instance, forcing Rosberg to lock up and short-cut the chicane.
As the second stops approached, both Mercedes drivers reported a loss of power, with their lap times falling to around two or three seconds slower than the chasing pack. Mercedes later reported the problems as being a “high-voltage control electronics failure” which led to a loss of MGU-K for both drivers. Hamilton ultimately fell victim to his car’s issues, with a brake failure leading to two off track excursions and his retirement in the pits a lap later. Rosberg carried on, managing the situation to the best of his ability, but falling steadily into the clutches of Perez, the Red Bulls and the Williams’.
Once caught, it looked as if Massa (before his second stop), and then Perez would assume the lead and run away to win. But with Perez unable to get into the DRS zone, the pack bottled up and so did the tension. Ricciardo ultimately proved supreme at judging the right opportunities to make a move and then actually making those moves stick, with Rosberg and Vettel coming through unscathed to complete the podium. Perez and Massa, however, would fall agonizingly and spectacularly short of outstanding results for their respective teams.
Button found some late race pace to get as high as seventh, before picking off all the opportunities in the late race chaos to come home fourth. Hulkenberg and Alonso did likewise, with Bottas falling out of the lead pack, and almost out of the points towards the end of race, before the last lap elevated him back to seventh. Vergne and Magnussen had anonymous races to eighth and ninth, with Raikkonen claiming tenth after being another to fall from the leading packs, partly due to spinning on his own at the hairpin.
Perez and Massa were classified 11th and 12th ahead of the only other finisher, Adrian Sutil, one lap down in 13th in his Sauber.
Sutil’s team-mate Esteban Gutierrez retired with suspected brake failure, joining both Caterhams, both Lotus’, Daniil Kvyat and Hamilton on the sidelines, all having retired with mechanical issues or brake failures.
Nico Rosberg now holds a 22 point lead in the world championship, with Daniel Ricciardo up to third, as the F1 circus moves on to the Red Bull Ring in Austria in two weeks time.
1. Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull-Renault 1h39m12.830s 2. Nico Rosberg Mercedes +4.236s 3. Sebastian Vettel Red Bull-Renault +5.247s 4. Jenson Button McLaren-Mercedes +11.755s 5. Nico Hulkenberg Force India-Mercedes +12.843s 6. Fernando Alonso Ferrari +14.869s 7. Valtteri Bottas Williams-Mercedes +23.578s 8. Jean-Eric Vergne Toro Rosso-Renault +28.026s 9. Kevin Magnussen McLaren-Mercedes +29.254s 10. Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari +53.678s 11. Sergio Perez Force India-Mercedes -1 lap 12. Felipe Massa Williams-Mercedes -1 lap 13. Adrian Sutil Sauber-Ferrari -1 lap 14. Esteban Gutierrez Sauber-Ferrari -6 laps
