It proved to be another comfortable victory for Max Verstappen in Sunday's Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal, his 41st career win equalling Ayrton Senna's tally while also delivering the 100th Red Bull victory since the team's F1 debut in 2005.
Fernando Alonso lost second place to Lewis Hamilton at the start, but the Aston Martin fought back to retake the position from the Mercedes driver mid-race. There was also a solid comeback effort for Ferrari, with Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz finishing in fourth and fifth ahead of Sergio Perez.
There was one safety car for George Russell crashing at turn 9. Although he was initially able to continue, he eventually retired on lap 55, joining Williams' Logan Sargeant who was sidelined with technical issues eight laps in.
After all the rain up to now this weekend, it was nice to see bright skies and sunshine over the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve as the drivers headed to the grid for the start of the 2023 Canadian Grand Prix. Red Bull's Max Verstappen took up his traditional spot on pole position but behind that there had been quite a shakeup, thanks to the combined effects of Saturday's weather and a number of post-qualifying penalties.
The highest profile casualty of the latter was Nico Hulkenberg. The Haas had finished qualifying second fastest, but a penalty for a red flag infringement meant he was down in fifth place. That promoted Fernando Alonso to second - the same position he had started last year's race - while Mercedes locked out the second row with Lewis Hamilton and George Russell. Further back, impeding penalties for Carlos Sainz, Lance Stroll and Yuki Tsunoda had dropped them down the order to P11, P16 and P19 respectively.
When the lights went out, Verstappen got a perfect start and leapt into the lead. Also getting away well on the cleaner side of the grid was Hamilton who managed to ambush Alonso for second into the opening corners. The top ten were all starting on the medium compound, with Sergio Perez the highest runner on hard tyres in 11th. Pierre Gasly was the only driver to start on softs and made immediate progress to move into 13th having started from P15 on the grid.
It was a clean opening lap despite a few close calls with the Wall of Champions for some. Verstappen had already pulled a second away from Hamilton while Alonso had stabilised in third ahead of Russell, Alpine's Esteban Ocon having got ahead of Hulkenberg for fifth. Oscar Piastri had also used the clean side of the grid to move ahead of his McLaren team mate Lando Norris for seventh, with Charles Leclerc gaining a spot in ninth ahead of a feisty Alex Albon in the newly-upgraded Williams, who was in the points in tenth ahead of Sainz and Perez.
With DRS enabled, Hamilton found himself exposed: Verstappen was too far ahead for him to get the activation, but Alonso was close enough be able to trigger the Aston Martin's rear wing flap and apply pressure on the Mercedes. There was a brief respite for Hamilton when a Virtual Safety Car was declared on lap 8 after Logan Sargeant was given a 'critical message' telling him to park the Williams at turn 6. No one was tempted to make an early pit stop under the VSC, although Tsunoda had already been in at the end of lap 1.
Before the hiatus, Piastri had managed to get past Hulkenberg for sixth, but Norris didn't have the chance to follow him through. He resumed in eighth with Leclerc all over the back of the MCL60. Alonso appeared to have given up on his assault on Hamilton for the time being and dropped back, while Verstappen's lead at the front was now up to almost four seconds on lap 11, which was when Gasly decided to pit to ditch his soft tyres and come back hoping for an advantage by coming out in clear air.
Hulkenberg had been the 'cork in the bottle' but he too was into the pits on lap 12, releasing those who had been massing behind in a growing sense of frustration. Verstappen reported a possible close encounter with the local wildlife but it didn't seem to have done in any harm. However when the opportunity presented itself in the form of a full safety car, he was quick to dive onto pit lane for his first service of the afternoon and a change to the hard tyres. Hamilton and Alonso followed suit and there was a referral to the stewards on the matter of potential unsafe release on the part of Mercedes, but no further action was deemed necessary.
The other Mercedes had been the cause of the safety car, with Russell taking too much kerb in turn 9 sending him thumping into the wall with heavy damage to the front wing. Remarkably he was able to get back underway and got all the way back to pit lane, where the engineers did a safety review and decided he could carry on after all - to a general sense of astonishment, albeit now running dead last and carrying enough damage to make it hard to make any forward momentum. "If this continues like this, I'm not going to be going to overtake, it's too bunched," he subsequently informed the Mercedes pit wall.
The race resumed on lap 17 with Verstappen, Hamilton and Alonso still running at the front, and Leclerc and Sainz now fourth and fifth having opted not to pit during the caution. Perez was similarly up to sixth followed by Kevin Magnussen and Valtteri Bottas, after which came four cars that had just stopped - Ocon, Piastri, Norris and Albon. The timing of the safety car had done Gasly no good at all, and the Alpine found himself down in 18th with only the wounded Mercedes in his rear view mirrors when the cars got back up to speed. The best action of the restart proved to be a spirited spat between Piastri and Norris, with Albon lurking in the background in the hope of picking up an easy pass. A lock-up into the final chicane for Piastri did indeed allow Albon to utilise DRS to pass one McLaren, while Norris took the opportunity to move up to tenth.
Norris picked up another place moments later when Magnussen was distracted by the requirement to hand back a spot to Ocon for not maintaining position under the safety car as he came out of the pits. Piastri tried to dispatch the Dane down the back straight but didn't have the speed to seal the deal; unlike Alonso, who pulled a similar but much cleaner move on Hamilton to finally wrest back control of second on lap 23.
Two laps later and Piastri finally did get ahead of Magnussen, with Albon chomping at the bit to follow suit in the much-improved FW45. He finally did so on lap 29. Just as in Barcelona it appeared that the Haas VF-23 was particularly heavy-footed and suffering chronic tyre degradation problems. There was certainly no question of their one-stopping the race - unlike Ferrari, which seemed to be eking out their initial set of mediums. Leclerc in fourth was assured that his team mate Sainz wouldn't be making any move on him during this stint, and Perez had fallen four seconds behind the pair as the last of those yet to come in for service.
After 30 laps, Verstappen was complaining about a lack of grip on his set of hard tyres but still held a four second lead over Alonso, who was quite able to keep out of DRS range of Hamilton. They were followed by the three cars yet to stop, in contrast to Hulkenberg who was in for a second time on lap 32 - not even half distance. The man who had been second in qualifying on Saturday was now at the back, where he was joined by Gasly who also pitted again on lap 34.
The pit crews scrambled for a possible safety car in the wake of a bruising joust between Magnussen and AlphaTauri rookie Nyck de Vries, who went side-by-side into turn 3 with both cars running straight off the track. They were eventually able to reverse out under local waved yellows and head back to pit lane for fresh tyres, with Russell being the big winner from the incident as he inched his way back into the top ten thanks to a number of cars ahead making their second stops. That included Norris, but he had been handed a five second penalty for "unsportsmanlike behaviour" for backing up the pack under the earlier safety car to make space for McLaren to 'double stack' its cars in the pits.
Perez finally pitted on lap 39 for mediums and Sainz was in next time round for a new set of the hard tyres; it was Leclerc's turn on lap 40, with the trio maintaining their relative positions during the sequence. Hamilton was in for his second stop on lap 41 to cover off the threat from Ferrari, putting him back on the preferred mediums for the final stint. Alonso pitted on lap 42 for hards and Verstappen was also in on lap 43 to move back to the mediums, the stop coming with no consequences for his comfortable lead over the Aston.
With Alonso directed to lift and coast because of a suspected rear brake issue, and Leclerc once again assured that Sainz wouldn't try to pass him, the top six appeared set. They were a long way ahead of Albon in P7 who was now under pressure from the recovering Russell - although both cars had only stopped once and potentially faced dropping behind the likes of Ocon, Norris, Stroll and Piastri should they come in a second time. In the end, the matter was settled when the damage to Russell's left-front brakes from his earlier accident proved too great, and he was forced to retire the Mercedes on lap 55 after all.
At the line, Verstappen's winning margin over Alonso and Hamilton was a serene 9.5 seconds. Alonso had come under pressure from Hamilton in the final laps but told the Aston pit wall "Leave it me!" and was good to his word, duly delivering P2.. Behind Hamilton it was Leclerc, Sainz and Perez who had pulled off solid tyre strategies to complete a decent bit of damage limitation after their qualifying mishaps. Perez made a late extra stop on lap 69 to pick up a set of soft tyres to finish on without loss of position, giving him the bonus point for the fastest lap.
Albon had his hands full holding on to seventh but just about managed to do so, a good debut for the new Williams upgrades and his first time in the points since the season opener in Bahrain. He had been helped in the final moments by Ocon being distracted by an assertive challenge from Norris to the finish line. It was somewhat moot for the McLaren, Norris subsequently dropping out of the top ten because of his "unsportsmanlike" post-race five second penalty leaving Stroll and Bottas to pick up the remaining points positions in his stead.
It meant that Piastri just missed out in P11 ahead of Gasly, Norris and Tsunoda, while Hulkenberg, Zhou Guanyu, Kevin Magnussen and Nyck de Vries ended up a lap off the lead lap. Russell and Sargeant were the only retirements of the day.
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