Canadian Grand Prix — Pre-Race Insights

Source: f1.com

One of my favorite tracks on the calendar. Long straights,low speed corners really close to the walls. It’s going to an exciting weekend for sure, or is it? Because I thought Monaco would be exciting and that turned out a bit dull, so hopefully I don’t jinx the results on Sunday.

With two wins each for Ferrari, Mercedes and Redbull, it’s been a fantastic season so far. We wanted to see a three horse race and while for the most part on paper it looks pretty even, there are tracks that some of them dominate more than the others. Monaco clearly favored Redbull but Mercedes and Montreal have been a match in heaven, dominating for the last five years. Will it be the same story this time?

Let’s look at some of the highlights going into Sunday’s race;

1. All the teams will looking forward to the PU( Power Unit) upgrade as we have reached 1/3rd stage of the season. Seven races done and a lot of mileage on the engine means that teams will be looking for the upgraded power units to provide the extra horsepower in a power circuit which is Canada.
2. Of all the front runners, Mercedes will not be using the new PU as they had some issues during manufacturing and did not want to take the risk. Will the 10th of a second cost them places in Qualifying or will their current powertrain which was reliable enough be able to take them over the line? We will have to see how it goes. Among the Ferrari drivers, only Vettel is getting the new upgrade as Kimi had already done so earlier in the season. Renault and Honda have also got new PU for the weekend while Haas had already upgraded their PU in Monaco. Midfield battle is going to interesting as well.
3. The front three looked pretty close in Free Practice. Vettel did have some issues with the car but got it going in FP3, but Kimi was looking strong. Lewis and Bottas were having a good time in the car, getting a feel for the hypersoft and supersoft tires. Max Verstappen had the best session topping all Free Practice timings and covering close to 50 laps on the tires which was great to see. He will be looking forward to ending the bad run of form that he’s on and will to look to set his doubters straight and hopefully not headbutt anyone.
4. Qualifying started off with a bang. No seriously, Romain Grosjean went out of the pits and almost instantly his car went poof. He is having his worst season so far. Vettel was able to find the balance that he needed in FP3 and was setting the pace in the early stages.
5. Mercedes didn’t bring as many Hypersoft tires as the rest and with less running and track data, they weren’t looking completely comfortable on that set of tires as compared to Redbull. They were half a second down in both Q1 and Q2 but Bottas did look a lot better than Hamilton.
6. I was expecting Lewis Hamilton to put in a mega lap in Q3, but he just couldn’t pull it off. Double frustration for him as he was out qualified by his team mate for only the second time this season and add to that, Verstappen beat him for P3.
7. In the midfield, Mclaren were exposed as their car did not suit this track. They aren’t particularly good in low speed corners and to compensate for that, they had to run high wing setup with more downforce and more drag which compromised their straight line speed and overall lap times.
8. Force India and Renault finished best of the rest with Ocon in 7th place and Perez in 10th separated by Hulkenberg in 6th and Sainz in 9th place.
9. Brendon Hartley and Charles Leclerc did a really good job finishing 12th and 13th and Stroll in front of his home crowd dropped out in Q3.

Source: thisisf1.com

Hope to see a much better race this out than Monaco. The way the 2018 cars are designed, it’s proving very difficult to overtake on almost any track. The revised rules for 2019 with simplified front wing and other minor changes will look to address this, but till then we hope to see some action on Sunday.

Hamilton has been off the front row only for the second time in his career in Canada. If he is looking to equal Michael Schumacher’s seven wins in Montreal, he’s got an uphill task ahead of him.

The front six look nearly equal on pace for the most part seperated by just 4/10th’s of a second so tire strategy will definitely come into play.

Hope you like what you read. Will be back tomorrow with the post race analysis. Enjoy the race.

Till then, Stay tuned to The Automotive Anecdotes for your daily dose of motorsports and just about everything on four wheels.

P.S The last few weeks I was looking forward to writing articles on MotoGP, but one thing leads to the other and it hasn’t happened. I am looking forward to hopefully cover some of the future MotoGP races and with WEC action next week, I’ll look to cover that as well. Stay tuned.