Canada – Course: Synthesis of Strategies

It was by using a two-stop sprint strategy that McLaren driver Lewis Hamilton became the seventh Grand Prix winner this season in as many races. Overtaking Sebastian Vettel’s Red Bull and Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari on track in the last eight laps, Hamilton clinched a spectacular victory with a 2.5-second lead and now leads the drivers’ world championship by two points. This marks the sixth change of leader in seven races.

Romain Grosjean (Lotus) achieves the best result of his career with second place after successfully executing his one-stop strategy. With Vettel pitting just seven laps before the finish and Alonso dropping down the order despite using the same strategy as Grosjean, it is Sergio Perez’s Sauber that capitalizes by securing his second podium of the season. The Mexican, however, adopted a different approach from Grosjean, starting on super-softs before switching to softs. The top 4 were separated by only seven seconds at the finish, illustrating the competitiveness of the field this season.

Starting second on the grid, Hamilton crucially took the advantage over pole-sitter Vettel on the 17th lap, after his pit stop, despite the fact that the Red Bull had stopped a lap earlier.

Hamilton was, however, overtaken in the same way by Alonso. Changes in the top 3 highlighted the importance of pit stop strategy. After passing the Ferrari driver, Hamilton made his final stop as the leader, once again opting for soft tires with 20 laps to go. Exiting the pits in 3rd place, he found himself at the start of an exceptional finale.

The conditions were much warmer for the race than during the rest of the weekend, with track temperatures exceeding 40°C (with 27°C in the air). The teams thus started with limited information on tire behavior at these temperatures; a factor compounded by the fact that last year’s race took place under extremely rainy conditions.

The temperatures in the air and on the track remained stable as the fuel tanks lightened, adding a new strategic factor to consider. Quite rare to be noted, no safety car was deployed during the race this year.

All the drivers started on super soft tires, except for Jenson Button (McLaren), Kimi Räikkönen (Lotus), Nico Hülkenberg (Force India), Sergio Perez (Sauber), Pastor Maldonado (Williams), and Pedro de la Rosa (HRT). Räikkönen managed the longest stint on super softs, completing 30 laps with them, while Alonso managed to make his set of softs last for 51 laps.

Paul Hembery, Pirelli Motorsport Director: The race was bound to be entertaining with three World Champions in the top three positions of the grid. At the end of the race, we saw Lewis Hamilton benefit from the superior speed of a two-stop strategy to gain the upper hand over his rivals. Special congratulations to our former test driver Romain Grosjean, who finished just 2.5 seconds behind with a one-stop strategy, and to Sergio Perez for another strong performance, once again demonstrating his perfect understanding of the tires. The result is one of the youngest podiums seen in F1, illustrating that the sport is in good hands. In warmer conditions and without a safety car, the degradation was perhaps a little higher than expected, which led Alonso and Vettel to lose tire performance towards the end of the race after very long stints. With several different strategies in play and the leaders coming together at the end of the race, we couldn’t have hoped for a more thrilling finish.

[From the official statement released by Pirelli]

To better understand this graph, you can use the FIA lap-by-lap summary by clicking here.