After Race 7: Canada

The Canadian Grand Prix never fails to deliver in absolute thrillers. Sunday’s race evoked memories of the 1999 European GP – which seemingly no-one wanted to win; the chaotic finish to the 2012 European GP in Valencia – with last-gasp crashes as the top five battled it out; and the 2012 Malaysian GP – where Sergio Pérez came up just short in pursuit of victory.

The almost unthinkable happened on Sunday as Mercedes conceded their chance of a perfect season, with Daniel Ricciardo becoming the 105^th man to win a Formula One Grand Prix – following in the footsteps of Thierry Boutsen, Jean Alesi, Lewis Hamilton & Robert Kubica as drivers who secured their maiden triumph in Montreal, along with circuit namesake Gilles Villeneuve.

With cars falling off the track left, right and centre due to various issues, can you imagine the potential carnage at Monza – with its extreme top speeds and braking points? The teams will already be furiously recalculating their models and software in preparation. Anyway, without much further ado – as the season crosses one-third distance – let’s get cracking…

  

Danny Ric, You bloody ripper!
Source: Red Bull Racing (Facebook)

1. Daniel Ricciardo (up one spot)

There simply was no other choice. Even prior to Canada, the Aussie was the only man able to infiltrate the Mercedes duo in the F1 Power Rankings, and his superb opportunistic victory sees him reach the summit.

Because one photo of the smiling Aussie isn't enough
Source: Red Bull Racing (Facebook)

2. Nico Rosberg (up one spot)

It has to be said, Rosberg came extremely close to reclaiming top spot this week after a fine pole position and an exceptional drive in the second half of Sunday’s race to extract the most from his ailing Mercedes, even if it was a tad fortuitous as others also had woes. It’s a critical 18-point gain for Nico over his team-mate and the pendulum seems to have swung in his favour once again. The only blot on his copybook was setting the fastest lap of the race (at the time) by cutting the last chicane.

3. Lewis Hamilton (down two spots)

Hamilton relinquishes top spot in the F1 Power Rankings for the first time since Malaysia after his miserable Canadian race; it’s now three poles, three wins and three DNFs for Lewis in Montreal. He was edged out by Nico to pole position – something which personally angered me as he chose not hug the (shorter) right-hand-side of the track in the run to the line – before his race unravelled to a terminal degree.

4. Daniil Kvyat (no change)

It was a fairly anonymous weekend for the young Russian. Comfortably outperformed by Jean-Éric Vergne throughout the weekend, he was still flirting with a possible point before his drive train broke in the second half of the race. Despite a silly spin in the early stages, he remains one of the stars of this season so far.

5. Romain Grosjean (no change)

After a couple of promising weekends, Canada proved to be another huge disappointment for Lotus, although they never expected to do well at the track. Both cars suffered bizarre bodywork damage on Sunday with Grosjean seeing his rear wing fail. He hangs on to P5 in the F1 Power Rankings for another week as he continues to lead the team through adversity.

6. Sebastian Vettel (up three spots)

The quadruple world champion’s yo-yo season continued in Canada. An excellent lap in Q3 saw him lead the ultra-competitive RBR-Williams quartet but he saw his chances of victory evaporate as a negative undercut (is overcut an F1-word?) occurred during the second round of pit-stops against his team-mate. He miraculously survived the late Pérez/Massa clash to pick up his second podium of the year.

And because one photo of happy team-mates isn't enough
Source: Red Bull Racing (Facebook)

7. Nico Hülkenberg (down one spot)

It’s a one place drop this week for The Hulk, despite picking up his sixth top-6 finish of the season. Why the drop? Just like in Bahrain, when Force India were leading the podium charge, it was Pérez – and not Hülkenberg – who was extracting the most from the car. Granted, a large part of this may have been influenced by tyre-strategy, but Pérez definitely seemed to be the quicker man on Sunday – especially given his various mechanical gremlins. Make no mistake though, it was another fine drive from Nico. It’s funny how things work out – when you consider the whole Maldonado-Hülkenberg-Williams-Lotus-Force India situation over the winter. 

It was Checo who was leading the Force India victory charge
Source: Sahara Force India (Facebook)

8. Sergio Pérez (up three spots)

Oh what might have been for Checo… For the second time in his career, a terrific late charge into a seemingly inevitable win turned sour for the Mexican; although this time it was the car that let him down. He was also penalized for the spectacular last-lap crash with Massa, which I felt was tad harsh – it seemed a racing incident.

 

But it all came to an abrupt end
Source: Fox Sports

=9. Jules Bianchi (down one spot) & Valtteri Bottas (down two spots)

Marussia’s Monaco momentum was literally brought to a crashing halt in Montreal as the two cars collided on the opening lap. Jules was actually outqualified by Max Chilton this weekend but was ahead of team-mate by Turn 3 – where the carnage commenced.

As for Bottas, he narrowly edged out Massa in qualifying and was in strong contention for a podium – even before the Mercedes duo suffered the maladies – but the second half of his race fell apart as Williams, once again, just weren’t able to fulfil their potential.

11. Jenson Button (up four spots)

The big gainer this week is JB after picking up a stunning four places in the final two laps. Of course, he was aided by the crash, but he also picked off both Hülkenberg and Fernando Alonso having slowly worked his way through the field. I’ve yet to see any onboard footage of Button’s last couple of laps but I can imagine they must look like Nick Heidfeld’s from Spa 2008.

12. Fernando Alonso (down three spots)

It was an eventual P6 for Alonso on Sunday but it was another fairly miserable weekend for Ferrari. They weren’t even close to challenging for the podium and thus missed this golden opportunity to battle for a rare 2014 victory. Unlike the Renault-powered cars, Ferrari have not yet made significant progress since the start of this season.

13. Felipe Massa (down one spot)

It might come as a surprise that Massa has dropped a spot after his Canadian GP but – when you look at it closer – rather than gain momentum this weekend, Williams once again failed to capitalize on the situation. Massa himself was outqualified by Bottas before a slow first pit-stop had crushing ramifications on the rest of his race. It was only 3-4 seconds longer but it left him mired in traffic and the time he lost cost him a possible victory. Perhaps I’m being overly critical but I don’t feel Massa was aggressive enough in the closing stages, he should have attacked the leading quartet instantly but failed to do so and the icing on the cake was the last lap crash. 

Source: Getty Images

It was good to see both drivers were fine - both with previous F1 head injuries
Source: Felipe Massa (Instagram)

14. Jean-Éric Vergne (up two spots)

Finally! JEV had a trouble-free weekend for the first-time since the season-opener and duly delivered with only second points-finish of the season after another fantastic qualifying effort. As mentioned last week, Vergne can take heart from Ricciardo’s superb results this season – something that reflects well on the Frenchman. Despite the (deserved) Kvyat hype, Vergne has been quietly delivering when the car has been reliable. He must hope he can build on this result to quell any further discussion about Carlos Sainz, Jr.

The sun finally shone for Vergne
Source: Scuderia Toro Rosso (Facebook)

15. Kevin Magnussen (down one spot)

Not much to say on young K-Mag this weekend. He was shaded by JB throughout the weekend but also capitalized on the last lap chaos to secure a couple of points on the track where his father, Jan, scored his only F1 points in what turned out to be his last ever race (1998).

16. Kimi Räikkönen (down four spots)

Yikes. The less said, the better. In addition to Ferrari’s aforementioned woes, Kimi further exaggerated his own issues with mistakes in both quali and the race – the latter being a pathetic-looking spin at the hairpin. He’s one of only four drivers (Button, Alonso, Massa) to have raced in the Austrian GP and will be desperate that experience can count for something.

 

The story of the weekend for Marussia & Caterham
Source: Autosport

The bottom six

In a change to the usual format, I’ll discuss the bottom six drivers together. If it seemed like no-one wanted to win the race at the sharp end of the field, then you’d be forgiven for thinking that none of these six (bar Maldonado) actually wanted to even be in Formula 1, let alone the F1 Power Rankings. Ineptness was seemingly the order of the day, or even the whole weekend.

The two Caterham drivers were tied at 17^th last week; Kamui Kobayashi retains that spot as he was the only one of the Caterham/Marussia drivers not to crash this weekend (Bianchi scraped the wall in practice).

Thereafter, I’m finding it hugely difficult to rank the final five. Pastor Maldonado had a clean weekend and was running well inside the top ten on the same one-stop strategy as Force India before his Lotus expired but he just has no momentum whatsoever to move himself off the bottom. Having said that, Stevie G (a.k.a. Esteban Gutiérrez) was another to slam the wall in turn 4 – a crash which ruled him out of qualifying. Adrian Sutil kept his nose clean but was once again the invisible man on the invisible team as he was classified behind the non-finishers Massa and Pérez. As with Pastor, the Swiss team have zero momentum.

Finally, Marcus Ericsson once again suffered a pressure-crash in Q1, while Max Chilton saw his finishing record come to an end in spectacularly embarrassing fashion. Clearly, it was an unintentional crash but the penalty is probably deserved on the basis that it ruined his team-mate’s race (although he did manage to outqualify Bianchi).

With all this in mind, I feel the only way of accurately depicting the grid is to place all five drivers in a tie for 20^th. Technically, it does not make sense, but the two place gap between the rest of the field and this five is justified. Hopefully, they will shake themselves out in Austria so F1 Power Rankings can return to a much more standard order next week!

 

And finally... because you just never forget your first win
Source: F1 Fanatic

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