It was Max Verstappen on the top step again in Canada, but this wasn’t just another victory for the Dutchman and Red Bull Racing.
This was a meaningful occasion in the history of the team and the driver.
For Verstappen, his 41st victory matches Ayrton Senna’s tally and puts him equal fifth on the all-time leaderboard for wins.
There’s no questioning Verstappen’s status as one of F1’s great talents. Increasingly the statistics will reflect this stature.
This was also a momentous day for Red Bull Racing, for which this was victory 100.
Most of those wins have come in two great bursts — in 2009–14, encompassing its first championship era, and since 2021, its second golden period.
It’s endured only one winless season since first topping the podium in 2009, and every season bar its first, in 2005, has featured at least one top-three appearance.
Verstappen is an obviously indelible part of that history, claiming 41 per cent of all the team’s victories.
That percentage is sure to grow in the coming weeks. The Dutchman is in an extreme purple patch, not only having won the last four races but also having led every lap since taking the lead of the Miami Grand Prix on lap 48 back at the start of May, 42 days ago.
It’s a formidable run he perpetuated in Canada. But with a reduced margin, is the best of Red Bull Racing’s season already behind it?
WHAT HAPPENED TO RED BULL RACING’S ADVANTAGE?
Verstappen led every lap from pole, but victory wasn’t quite as straightforward as it might’ve looked on paper.
The margin at the flag was 9.5 seconds over Fernando Alonso — comfortable, but hardly the almost half-minute advantage he enjoyed in Spain.
And for much of the race the gap hovered at around five seconds, which was close enough to keep the result in doubt. It was only in the second stint, when Alonso was lifting and coasting, that the margin expanded.
Sergio Pérez was also unable to haul himself past the Ferrari drivers, never mind nab a podium position.
Given so much of the talk of the last few weeks has been about upgrades for Mercedes, Ferrari and Aston Martin, was this a sign that the pursuers are catching up to Red Bull Racing?
Let’s not get too excited just yet.
If the RB19 has a weakness — relatively speaking, anyway — it’s warming up the tyres in cold weather, and the weather was chilly on Sunday. The ambient was around 20°C, with the track fluctuating between 30°C and 34°C — very cool by F1 standards.
At a low-energy circuit like this, where neither the surface nor the corners do much to build temperature, Verstappen couldn’t unleash his car’s pace with his usual abandon.
Even so, his engineer suggested in the second half of the race that the gap was artificially small because both Alonso and Hamilton were racing each other and therefore pushing much harder than he was. In other words, he had pace in hand.
“We were pushing all the race,” Alonso said. “I didn’t have one lap where we could relax a little bit.”
Christian Horner also revealed after the race that Verstappen had a dead bird stuck behind his front-right brake duct, the Dutchman having radioed a bird strike incident earlier in the race — a rare but valid excuse.
There’s still some reason to be optimistic, though.
Aston Martin has been very bullish that its upgrade package is doing enough to put it in the frame at some tracks and in some conditions.
Mercedes is also pleased to have finished on the podium at what it thinks should be one of its worst circuits given its car’s weakness in slow-speed corners.
“We’re slowly chipping away,” Hamilton said. “To just have this consistency and be up on the podium here in Montreal [is satisfying].”
But reducing the deficit isn’t the same as overturning it, and there’s still a long way to go before we can start talking about that.
FERRARI’S RARE GOOD MOVE
If you thought Ferrari had made another classic Ferrari mistake by not pitting behind the safety car, contrary to the instincts of most of the rest of the field, you weren’t alone.
You couldn’t really be blamed for being pessimistic after a shocker of a Saturday either. The team had thrown away what looked like strong pace on some silly mistakes which, after penalties, left Charles Leclerc 10th and Carlos Sainz 11th.
Maybe it was the immense frustration of Saturday night that finally steeled nerves and clarified minds. Whatever the cause, Ferrari finally nailed a race.
The team was confident in the race pace it had glimpsed during the disrupted single Friday practice session, and it was right to trust what it saw, rejecting the opportunity for a status-quo stop that likely would’ve locked in minor points allowed it to play to its strengths.
Promoted to fourth and fifth, both drivers comfortably made it well past half distance on the medium compounds before switching to hards. By then they’d built such a big advantage over the midfield that they could stop without losing places.
It was hugely positive not just for the gains or the good call but because the car behaved consistently on both compounds and through the race — something that couldn’t be said about the car before this weekend.
Key to ensuring the strategy worked was to prevent Sainz and Leclerc from battling between themselves, thereby maximising their pace and potential rather than losing time to each other.
It was a rare example of the team proactively laying down the law with an obvious clarity of purpose.
Given Pérez got to within four seconds of them early in the second stint, the decision would appear to have been decisive.
There were still some signs of the old Ferrari. The team was clearly tempted to stop Sainz earlier, after which he would’ve lost many places, but the Spaniard rebuffed the call. We’ve become used to hearing the drivers argue with the team over strategy calls, which still speaks to the understandable lack of faith after years of poor decisions.
Days like these are crucial to repairing that trust.
A BAD DAY FOR FRONTRUNNING TEAMMATES
Aston Martin was targeting a double podium finish this weekend given the confidence it had in its upgrades, and Alonso’s pace proved that should’ve been on the cards.
But while the Spaniard made the most of his chances, Lance Stroll turned in yet another disappointing performance.
Eliminated 13th in qualifying and starting 16th after a penalty for blocking, his toil got him only just into the points in ninth, ensuring the team had no chance of overhauling Mercedes for second in the constructors standings.
While he was hampered by an early pit stop that left him unable to capitalise on the safety car, he also simply lacked pace on a weekend the car was the strongest it’s been all season.
Sergio Pérez’s painful campaign also continued, with the Mexican again unable to make it onto the podium after a disappointing qualifying performance.
He was hurt by his strategy gamble to start on the hard tyre, which meant he couldn’t stop behind the safety car, but that only meant he was on effectively the same strategy as the Ferrari drivers, neither of which he was able to pass before the end of the race.
A bonus point for fastest lap courtesy of a late stop for fresh softs was his consolation, leaving him 69 points behind Verstappen, approaching three clear race victories.
He’s also just nine points ahead of Alonso in the battle for second in the drivers championship — a situation that ought to have been unimaginable given Red Bull Racing’s raw pace advantage.
You also have to wonder what Mercedes might’ve been able to achieve had George Russell been in the podium battle rather than binning his car early in a rare unforced error, though Alonso looked like he had just enough in hand to keep ahead.
ALBON PULLS A BLINDER FOR BIG WILLIAMS POINTS
It’s incredibly difficult for even very talented drivers to make an impression at the back of the field, but Alex Albon has grasped every opportunity that’s come to him this season to make sure the former Red Bull protégé isn’t forgotten among the backmarkers.
He’s risen to the challenge of Williams’s ambitious strategies on every occasion. In Bahrain that got him a rare point, and in Canada it paid even bigger dividends, with seventh place.
The finish was built on his strong qualifying performance to start ninth and then making only one pit stop behind the safety car.
It required him to take his set of hard tyres 57 laps — no mean feat given the traction demands in Canada and the Williams car’s status as having among the lowest downforce loads on the grid.
But the Thai driver was flawless despite the train of much faster cars attempting to pass him. When he took the chequered flag he had six drivers following him within just 4.4 seconds.
Points are hard to come by in 2023 given four cars and eight drivers by right should be finishing well ahead of the midfield, leaving just two places up for grabs. To score six points in one hit is hugely valuable for a team like Williams, pulling it well clear of AlphaTauri and putting it in the mix with Haas and Alfa Romeo.
McLAREN PENALTY SUGGESTS NEW RULES TACK
McLaren had another race to forget after failing to get either car into the points despite both starting in the top 10.
It was always an unlikely task given the faster Ferrari cars and Sergio Pérez were starting behind them, and the team was also caught out by Albon jumping the entire midfield.
Oscar Piastri had a solid race to 11th, missing the points by just 0.669 seconds.
Lando Norris’s race was more interesting, however, after he was penalised for unsportsmanlike conduct during the safety car, earning him a five-second penalty and dropping him out of the 10.
Norris was behind Piastri at the time and McLaren wanted to pit both on the same lap. The Briton slowed by more than 50 kilometres per hour to give the Aussie a gap to make his stop, ensuring his own tyre change wouldn’t be delayed by having to queue in the pit lane.
Norris argued it was within a well-worn grey area many drivers regularly play in and that the penalty is therefore inconsistent given punishments are rare.
Interesting is that penalties for this kind of incident are normally handed out as breaches against safety rules — driving erratically or dangerously while the safety car is deployed, for example.
The fact the stewards have reached for the unsportsmanlike conduct rule in the international sporting code — the rule book that governs all motorsport, not just Formula 1 — suggests the sport or the FIA may be considering taking a harder line on backing up the pack from now on.
