MONTREAL – The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is a beast of a racing circuit. Essentially a series of fast straights linked by chicanes and a hairpin, the parkland course demands just enough downforce for braking stability and little more. There’s a 50 percent chance of the safety car coming out and red flags not unknown. The weather always plays a part – regardless of whether it comes in the flavor of torrential rain or extreme temperatures capable of melting tarmac and destroying tires. It’s a race where strategy is king.
Like Monaco, it's an event at the faster end of Pirelli's tire range with the soft and supersoft tires in play – but similarities to Monaco don't go very far on a circuit where overtaking is not only possibly but positively encouraged. The 70 laps in Montreal are heavily influenced by strategy with the circuit falling into a zone of uncertainty between one and two stops, with the pitwall needing to make quick decisions and the crew having to be on their toes.
In the end, Daniel Ricciardo took his maiden F1 victory thanks to a determined drive, a cool head and just the right amount of risk – but good decisions put him in the position to make his moves as the race came down to the wire. Grinning like a champagne-drenched Cheshire cat, he immediately paid tribute to the decisions taken during the race. "The strategy was great today. They called me in at the right times and the pitstops were really quick as well. I couldn't ask for any more."
Here's what he was talking about – and a few more of our favorite stats from the weekend.
Running
Seb and Daniel cumulatively ran 1448km over the weekend. They did 999km on the soft tire (14 sets) and 449km on the supersoft (12 sets).
Pitstops
A two-stop strategy was predicted to be 25s faster than one, but it was highly dependent on the amount of graining the supersoft tire suffered. Both drivers ran a two-stop race and were battling a mix of one- and two-stopping rivals for podium positions. Both cars ran in Q3 and therefore started the race on the used set of supersofts with which they set their fastest laps in Q2. Daniel was one of the first cars to pit, stopping on Lap 13 to switch to soft tires, and again for a second set of soft tires on lap 37. Sebastian followed the same basic strategy with his stops on laps 15 and 36.
Overtakes on track
The race saw 51 successful overtaking moves (compared to just a dozen in Monaco). These exclude passes made on the first lap, during which Seb jumped Lewis Hamilton to take P2. He would eventually lose the place to Hamilton in the first stint. He re-passed Hamilton on lap 47 as the Mercedes driver slowed with a brake trouble, and then passed Sergio Pérez in the closing laps. After his first stop, Daniel needed to work through traffic, passing Pastor Maldonado on lap 17. He also passed Hamilton on lap 47, then Pérez on lap 65 and finally Nico Rosberg for the lead on lap 68.
Top speed
The top speed hit by an RB10 in the speed trap over the weekend was 334 kph (208 mph). In comparison, the high downforce package in Monaco saw us reach top speeds of only 287 kph (178 mph).
Fastest lap
Felipe Massa had the fastest race lap, a 1:18.504 set on lap 58. Unusually, this came on soft tires that were ten laps old – but Massa had been penned in behind teammate Valtteri Bottas and the one-stopping Nico Hülkenberg at the beginning of his third stint and only managed to show his true pace when clear of that battle.
Daniel's fastest lap of the race was 1:18.640, achieved on lap 68 when he took the lead. Seb's best was 1:19.171 on lap 48. Sebastian spent most of the race in traffic – following Hülkenberg for much of his second stint, and then Daniel and Pérez in his third.
Strategy
Red Bull spent most of the race embroiled in battles with Williams and Force India. An early Safety Car led the field from lap two until lap seven, easing the fears of those marginal on fuel. Daniel held sixth position off the line and was running behind the Williams pair of Bottas (P4) and Massa (P5) in the first stint. He was the first of the front-runners to stop, pitting on lap 13 in an attempt to get by the Williams with an undercut. Bottas reacted a lap later and maintained his position ahead of Daniel. Massa lost places due a wheel gun failure.
At the second round of stops, Bottas blinked first, pitting on lap 35. At that point he was the meat in a Red Bull sandwich, half a second behind Seb and half a second ahead of Daniel. The Red Bulls had to respond but were too close on track to pit both on the same lap so Seb, through the virtue of being ahead on the road, pitted on lap 36, and Daniel on lap 37. Seb maintained his position ahead of Bottas but Daniel jumped both – something that would ultimately win him the race.
The numbers tell the story: Daniel had the fastest pitstop but only very marginally. His time through the pitlane was clocked at 23.274s versus 23.340 for Seb (Bottas was a second slower with 24.491). The difference was what happened on track. Daniel was able to put in a super-quick in-lap whilst Seb got held up by Hülkenberg on his in-lap, particularly at pit entry where he had to slow more than necessary as Hülkenberg braked to take the Turn13/14 chicane. Daniel in comparison got a much cleaner run in to the pit entry, which gained him nearly a second in comparison to Seb.
When the pitstops had played out – and the strategic part of the race was largely over – Daniel was running third and Sebastian fourth. Rosberg was leading but rapidly being reeled in, with Pérez in between the Red Bulls and the leader. Force India were the wild cards in Canada. They bucked the mainstream two-stop strategy and instead ran a one-stop race that lifted them out of the midfield and into contention. Pérez started 13th on the supersoft and ran to lap 34. Hülkenberg started 11th on the soft tire and ran to lap 41. They naturally ran at a slower pace than the two-stoppers but had good traction and power out of the corners to hold faster cars at bay for much of the race. The pace delta required to make a pass on the long back straight was an estimated 12-15kph – and the Force Indias weren't struggling enough to make that easy.
Hülkenberg emerged behind Seb after his one and only stop but Pérez had done better to come out of the shuffle in P2. Daniel stuck to his rear wing for nearly 30 laps with Sebastian right behind him. The trio caught leader Rosberg with 20 laps remaining but Pérez – with tires 10 laps older than Rosberg's – didn't have enough to get by. Daniel eventually passed the Mexican with a brave move at Turn One, and had enough pace in the car to pass Rosberg for the lead with relative ease three laps later.
Seb, meanwhile, lined up his own move on Pérez and took third position shortly before Pérez collided with the fast approaching Massa. The resulting safety car ensured that Rosberg did not have to fight off Seb on the last lap.
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