The strategy was based on a single stop to take on the hardest compound available here, the Supersoft and
then run to the flag. So Kimi also upped his pace a bit. Seb locked his front wheels and lost a second and
then had some traffic to deal with. But once he’d cleared the backmarkers, he banged in a super third sector
to set the fastest lap on lap 29.
Kimi also upped his pace prior to his pit stop in the hope of attacking Hamilton. He came in on lap 33 and had
his rival in his sights, but lost time lapping Sirotkin.
Out in front, Sebastian led by around 6 seconds. Raikkonen set the fastest lap and was back in the hunt. On
lap 37, Bottas pitted and that was the sign for the Scuderia to also bring in Vettel and the mechanics did a
good job on his car.
After that it was a race run at arms length, with Seb managing his lead, the tyres and fuel consumption and
paying particular attention to the backmarkers. Behind Seb, Bottas had to fend off a hard charging
Verstappen.
“Tell them not to wave the chequered flag, it’s not over yet,” said Seb on the radio. He was right, as there was
still a lap to go, the best one of the whole weekend.
Maurizio Arrivabene
”Without a doubt, today’s win is down to a very good car and a great drive from Seb. The team, both at the
track and back in Maranello, has worked hard and methodically, preparing the car, which right from
Saturday’s qualifying proved to be very quick. The tyres responded very well to the strategies we devised. It’s
a shame that Kimi’s mistake in qualifying affected his whole race. There is still a long way to go in the
championship and we have to continue giving it our all. I take this opportunity to thank our fans and customers
who never fail to show us their support and our sponsors and technical partners, especially Shell, for their
support in our development programme.”
Sebastian Vettel
”This win is very important for our tifosi and for our team, today is a special day. 40 years ago Gilles won
here, then 14 years ago it was Michael and I was thinking of that today. At the start I tried to build up a
margin, I was happy with my first lap and then the safety car came out and I had to start over again. During
my last 10 laps I prayed that my car would not develop a problem until the end! Points are always important
but today this win means a lot and not just in terms of Championship. The season is still so long and there
are many races ahead. The main thing is that our car is strong and stays like that, so that we can fight.”
Kimi Raikkonen
“Yesterday’s mistake in qualifying did not put ourselves in a good position for the race. Overtaking was very
difficult here; I tried to get ahead of Hamilton after my pit stop, but it did not work out. Then It was even difficult
to get close enough to him to open the DRS. It was a surprise, because on this track you would expect to
see overtaking and fights, instead it was a similar story to two weeks ago in Monaco. The race was boring
and not much happened. We decided to stay out a little bit longer on our first set of tyres and I don’t think
that cost us any position: it was our only option to try something different.”
Valtteri Bottas
We tried everything we could, but I don’t think we had a chance to really fight for the win today. I had an
exciting start to the race, when I was defending second place as hard as I could. I was on the outside in Turn
1, trying to carry a lot of speed to be on the inside line for Turn 2. I went wheel to wheel with Max, we fought
hard, but it was all fair and I was just happy that I managed to stay ahead of him. After that I was trying to put
pressure on Sebastian, but didn’t have enough pace. The Ferrari was controlling the race and we just weren’t
quick enough today. I backed off late in the race to save some fuel which is why Max got so close. We were
the only top team that didn’t bring a new engine for this race, everyone else had an improved power unit.
Hopefully the introduction of our new engine in France will help us in the fight with Ferrari and Red Bull.
Lewis Hamilton
It was a tough day in the office today, but I’m just very grateful that I finished today’s race and score some
points. From the start I was down on power and my engine was overheating. I couldn’t get the temperatures
down, so I just thought it was going to fail. Every single lap I was waiting for the power to just drop away and
disappear – but it kept going. I could have lost a lot more points today; fifth is not the strongest result, but it
could have been a lot worse. Ferrari have been doing a slightly better job and brought a better package, but
we are very close. The guys are working really hard, but each and every one of us can always do better and
improve. We will just keep our heads down, keep pushing and stay positive.
Toto Wolff
This has been a tricky weekend for us, with Ferrari showing they had the quickest car in qualifying and in the
race. We came to Montreal expecting to perform strongly and today’s result is a further lesson to us that the
historic patterns of performance between the teams are not holding true this year. It is very hard to see a
trend from circuit to circuit, and the race results are being decided by tight margins – which team makes the
fewest mistakes, develops its chassis and power unit most effectively, finds the right balance between
performance and reliability, and puts together their race weekend cleanly from Friday onwards. Today, the
fastest laps table showed three teams within 0.15s and this is the new reality of 2018. Looking at today’s
race, Valtteri got a good start then defended extremely well from Verstappen in the first two corners. We
never had the pace to challenge Sebastian – but that move was the basis for his P2 finish. After this, he raced
hard, hardly put a foot wrong but we didn’t have the pace for any more today. On Lewis’ side, we had an issue
with a chassis component that compromised his cooling from the opening lap. That meant the engine was
running hot and we had to manage temperatures, costing performance, in the opening stint. We were able to
open up the bodywork at the pit-stop to improve the situation, but also lost a place to Ricciardo that we were
unable to get back during the next 50 laps. It has been a tough weekend for us – tougher than we expected –
and this result is a wake-up call for everybody in the team. We now need to reflect in the right way,
understand where we can find more performance and respond in Paul Ricard in two weeks’ time.
Andrew Shovlin
We came here to win so to leave with a second and fifth falls a long way short of what we had thought we
were capable of. We’d not seen what Sebastian could do on the UltraSoft or SuperSoft tyres during Friday
running so his pace was an unknown, but almost straight away it was clear he had a little bit on Valtteri and
was able to keep us at arm’s length during the first stint. Not being able to put him under any pressure meant
we couldn’t create any opportunity for Valtteri so second was all we could play for today. Valtteri got a bit
marginal on fuel towards the end of the race, having pushed hard to keep up in stint one but he managed it
well and was able to defend the threat from Max who was putting in some quick laps towards the finish. Lewis
had a tricky afternoon, from the word go we could see that we had a chassis side issue with the cooling to
the power-unit that was costing us performance. We couldn’t resolve this during the race but eventually found
some means to contain the situation and more importantly, we were able to contain the damage and thereby
manage the risk to the PU so we could complete the race. This weekend has not been ideal for either
championship and we are only a third of the way into the season with a very long way still to go. We clearly
need to be getting performance on the car and we will be working hard to ensure that we can perform more
strongly in Paul Ricard.
Related Material
... Chassis Numbers >>>
|
