2018 Canadian Grand Prix, Montreal June 8-10

[GrandAxe]

Congrats to Seb for a dominating win.
Congrats to Max for his first crash free weekend of the season.

[LM10]

Redbull was very strong on a power track. At no time Hamilton was able to do a real attempt on overtaking Ricciardo. The traction of this Redbull is out of this world.
They have done an amazing job and it seems their car gets faster every weekend.

[holeindalip]

They need to get the weight of the cars down to get the racing back

[F1NAC]

GOOD BOY LECLERC!!!

[f1316]

The end of the race might have seemed a bit more exciting if they’d actually showed Max closing on Bottas! 0.1s so must have been very close to the naked eye - if only we could have seen it!

Just as a completely uninformed supposition: I reckon the new spec engine is probably letting Seb use a higher mode for more of the race; as much as Kimi does often go missing, I suspect the old PU he’s running might require a bit more babying in terms of modes and/or fuel consumption. Just a guess though.

[Brenton]

It is all about qualifying now astracrazy I agree. Jono I disagree it's always been like this. Before the coorelation was strong between qualy and race position, but the *causation* wasn't nearly as strong as it is now. Now the top 3 teams are so similar, and it's so hard to overtake, that qualy position is much more important now than 2+ years ago. 3 years ago the drivers would finish similar to their qualy position not because that's where they qualified, but because the performance gaps meant that they tended to qualify at the same pace as their relative race pace.

Any bets on what the talking point will be after this race?

1) what a boring race with no passing
2) single stop race wth the softest compounds

Another massively disappointing McLaren performance.
A crash-free weekend for Verstappen
Lack of overtakes
Haas: no crashes, but no points either
Why F1 is repeating the Lap1 crash 6 times during the race
The three top teams being so far ahead of anybody else

Top three are so far ahead in part because the 2nd and 3rd best teams are almost equal with the best. If they were each 0.5s off of each other then the gap to the 4th team wouldn't seem like a big deal. But it raises the question of why there isn't the same parity there was in 2008-2012. The top three teams all have different PU's so that can't explain it all. I guess budgets are the big reason? Now it's the big three with similar budget ... the rest much lower? Or how low is Renault's and Mclaren's budget ?

I'm happy with this race for what it means for the championship battle. And Red Bull being so close to the top 2. Though I expected a much more entertaining race. I guess I bought in to the repeated nonsense that people kept saying all weekend about it being supposedly easy to overtake here. Maybe that would have been true if not for the tires... one stop on the softest compound. Ferrari didn't risk Kimi 2-stopping because a pit crew member could have gotten injured on an extra stop, they said.

[JonoNic]

Ferrari seems to be better with in season developments this year.

[Brenton]

komninosm if you can't read people criticizing a driver without posting an outburst over it, maybe you shouldn't be on a racing discussion forum. Maybe you should "get over it"... you're swearing because some stranger is pointing out the fact that a F1 driver made a bad mistake, lol. What's so hard about having a fun discussion about racing?

Bottas and Raikkonen big disappointments for me today, not for the first time. 2 world championship race seats being wasted there in my opinion.

Red Bull also not as fast in race trim as I expected.

Bottas is second...

He also bottled it under pressure again. Gaining on Vettel then outbraked himself passing a back marker.

Never WDC material in a month of Sundays

It happens when pushing super hard. Would it have been better if he had slower laptimes but didn't make a mistake?
People give unfairly critical analysis of Bottas sometimes imo. Making a mistake has to be looked at in context. Every corner, the driver is pushing to a specific limit based on weighing the pros/cons of the risk level they're taking.

If there's anyone to criticise , Bottas would be one of the last this weekend.
Did Stroll have a puncture before contact with Hartley? Otherwise it was an awful mistake.
Was Kimi with a bad PU? Or was he just embarrassingly slow yet again?
Bottas and the RB drivers being on their game really helped Vettel today.

[Bill_Kar]

Hamilton had his chance and he blew it.

FFS you've made a dozen posts whining about Hamilton.
Get over it. He had a PU problem so his strategy was compromised and troubles on Saturday too.

There was one lap that he was close and he lost the brakes. Should I say bravo?
Troubles on Saturday were his fault.

[Bill_Kar]

Redbull was very strong on a power track. At no time Hamilton was able to do a real attempt on overtaking Ricciardo. The traction of this Redbull is out of this world.
They have done an amazing job and it seems their car gets faster every weekend.

Most certainly. They do manage the tires as well. So, do they stick with Renault now?

[balintgabulya]

I was so excited for this race, and then literally nothing happened.

The cars have just outgrown this track. It is too small, despite the 3 DRS sectors, it seem like every one had it all the time. With midfield being almost lapped by the slowest top3 car, there is just no pressure from them, they lose 1s per lap, that is crazy much.

Only good with this race is Vettel catching up to Hamilton in the WDC. Hopefully we will have some close racing in the coming races.

[maxxer]

Cant actually imagine a one hour pre race show , a 2 hour boring to death race and then more then an hour of after race show.
Happy i dont have Sky F1 , just pack up go home next time fly in on sunday comment the race and go.
If its gonna be this boring for the next years who cares.

[zeph]

But it raises the question of why there isn't the same parity there was in 2008-2012.

Engine freeze. From 2006 until 2013 the engines remained essentially the same. And they could use like 8 in a season.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_O ... %80%932013

[F1NAC]

Redbull was very strong on a power track. At no time Hamilton was able to do a real attempt on overtaking Ricciardo. The traction of this Redbull is out of this world.
They have done an amazing job and it seems their car gets faster every weekend.

I think that was due to that RB had superb traction out of hairpin vs Merc. And also Merc had its rear sliding all over the place. Weird for Merc

[Brenton]

But it raises the question of why there isn't the same parity there was in 2008-2012.

Engine freeze. From 2006 until 2013 the engines remained essentially the same. And they could use like 8 in a season.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_O ... %80%932013

But why then is there such a big gap between Red Bull to the damn works-Renault team and the other Renault team? And the same with the Mercedes customers and Ferrari customers. If it's due to PU differences, why are the top three all in different PU's, the three PUs that are used by 9 of the 10 teams, all almost equal in performance?

It raises the question of whether aero and/or mechanical grip performance has diverged a lot throughout the field. I didn't follow F1 in 2014-2016 so I don't know about that time, but with the high-downforce cars of 2017-present maybe that's caused aero differences to be magnified in performance gaps.

I wonder if heavier cars cause more mechanical grip performance variation. If there's less margin of performance naturally with the lighter F1 cars of 10 years ago? Nascar has interestingly big performance gaps throughout their field despite having a total opposite philosophy of F1 about parity and spec, and those cars are super heavy... heavy and mechanical grip focused rather than differences in aero or PU. Here's the 2017 qualifying results at Watkins Glen (70 second lap road course) http://racing-reference.info/getqualify/2017-22/W