Hallo, MiniFans! Saturday’s qualifying didn’t exactly turn out as expected, with a McLaren on pole position being the only prediction that came true. Leclerc split the papayas, while Verstappen, unable to complete his last fastest lap, would start from seventh but with a good deed under his belt, as he confirmed to have given a tow to Bortoleto to try and help the rookie in his first evern Q3 appearance.
An aborted start kicked off the race, as Sainz’s car wouldn’t kick off dure to a problem with the brake by bias, as it was braking the rear tyres when not necessary. Once he managed to start the car with some help from the marshals, he was still experiencing problems, so he was forced to retire the car before the GP had even started.
The real start wasn’t as clean as we should expect from some of the best drivers in the world. The very beginning was so, with Leclerc trying to get past Norris and leaving the outside fully open for Piastro to get through. The problem came in turn 3, where Antonelli braked too late, locked his wheels and plowed through the field, with the unlucky recipient being Verstappen, leaving both out of the race and forcing a very early safety car. A couple of laps later, the racing resumed with both McLarens leading and two former teammates, Hamilton and Russell, fighting for fourth place.
Norris and Piastri didn’t back down, circling the track almost a second faster than anyone else, laying down the law and making it known that the bet anyone else could fight for was third place. Due to this early push, the top 6 became very spread out, but the tune changed from Gasly downwards. The Alpine driver was the first on softs, which were pretty much desintegrating on him, and thus creating a train of cars who were giving their all to try and get past the moving chicane that the Frenchman had become before all those on the red rimmed tyres went to visit their boxes.
The first meeting between the McLaren rivals came early on, proving they had learnt their lesson in the way they interacted with each other. Piastri’s attempt wsaa clear was aggressive but respectful, and Norris replied in kind, not letting his first place be inherited by his teammate. The pressure seemed to be getting to the English driver, as his driving wasn’t quite as clean as expecte and on occasion used exterior kerbs a bit too much, risking damage to both his floor and his tyres. As this battle was going on, Russell was the first on mediums to change tyres, kicking off the stops. McLaren wanted to be careful with theirs, instructing Norris that they’d only pit if he was overtaking, but after a near incident before the two, he was quickly whisked into the pits. Piastri was left out and told to show his pace in clean air, which was hindered a bit by a flat spot caused by hard braking to avoid crashing into Norris earlier, but mostly just uncomfortable for the driver.
As per usual, McLaren sometimes forgets that they’re the current world champions and asks the driver questions they should be answering themselves. Nevertheless, Piastri replied with his preference as to the distance to Norris and deltas, setting the decision in stone to leave him out a handful of laps more. Most drivers were trying the same two-stop strategy, but a couple of risk takers, Alonso and Lawson, were going for just a one stop and making their mediums last as ong as possible. They had their hearts stop when a collision betwenn Tsunoda and Colapinto ended with the Argentinian spinning, but he managed to control his car and contune racing while the Japanese driver got a 10-second penalty for his hand in the incident.
Almost halfway through the race, the one-stoppers finally entered the pitlane, leveling the playing field and joinng the line of cars the frontrunners would soon have to juggle among blue flags. Their tyre management helped in not losing a ton of time, but it was the handful of laps less on Piastri’s tyres that started to make the difference in starting to reduce the distance until Norris was called in for his second and last stopone lap before Piastri did the same, almost colliding with a Colapinto that hadn’t been told he was exiting the pitlane and who got a 5-second penalty for pushing the McLaren off the track.
Ferrari, in pace to get a podium and a fourth place, kept on with their radio shenanigans of not answering clear cut questions from their drivers, with Hamilton as the target in this occasion, who obeyed the order to box despite not getting clarification on his pace. Not too much later, when the last ten laps started ticking off, Piastri upped the pace, lowering the distance to Norris to under three seconds for the first time since the beginning of the race and setting fastest sectors and laps as they started to come up to lapped cars again.
Norris, seeing that his advantage was being jacked at and demolished by Piastri, asked for help over the radio to improve his pace, but the answer was that the pace difference was simply due to lapped cars in the straight. However, the distance kept slowly shrinking after taking the lapped cars fluctuations into account, but a message from McLaren informing Norris of a small problem with the front wing was slightly throwing off the balance probably helped calm down the British driver, who likely finally understood part of the reason why his teammate had been able to get so close. Despite all the effort he put in, Piastri wasn’t quite able to finally catch his teammate in order to set up a battle for the win, unlike Bortoletto, who did take the fight up to his “boss”, Alonso, to wrap up a great race by the rookie, battling until the finish line right in between both McLaren cars as they were being lapped. Norris managed to get past, unlike Norris, but it didn’t matter anymore, as they crossed the line in first and second respectively, while joined by Leclerc on the third step of the podium.
One of the main points of interest in the race disappeared a couple hundred metres into it, as Verstappen was underemoniously taken out by an Antonelli who was immediately apologetic and rushed to explain the incident to the current world champion, who listened to the rookie’s explanations. However, there was still the battle between the McLarens, who were aggressive yet respecful of each other, showing that the Canada page has been turned over and both have eyes on the championship more than individual races.
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