The Canadian Grand Prix’s return to F1 2022 calendar certainly didn’t disappoint with wet weather qualifying mixing things up nicely for race day. The 2022 Canadian Grand Prix had plenty of action up and down the field which included comebacks and some intense fight for the race win. Here are the winners and losers from the ninth round of the F1 2022 season:
Max Verstappen
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The defending world champion, after picking up pole on Saturday with some crushing pace, had to hold off the pace of Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari on race day. But that job was done with ease by Verstappen, despite him being on older tires. The Red Bull driver always looked like he had an answer to Sainz despite the Ferrari Driver’s best efforts to pick up his first race win in Formula 1. With his sixth race win of the season, Verstappen now holds almost a fifty point lead over nearest rival Sergio Perez and Charles Leclerc and it’s starting to look like the championship is his to lose.
Lewis Hamilton
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The 2022 Canadian Grand Prix was surely a delight to watch for the Hamilton fans out there as he managed to get on the podium for the first time since the opening race of the season in Bahrain. Surely neither he nor his team could have expected the car to be so close to the pace in the race having been so far off in practice. The safety car may have fallen in favor of the Silver Arrows but there were periods in the race when Hamilton was the fastest driver on track, and the Briton was also able to battle with Verstappen after the Red Bull left the pits to lift the Montreal crowd, reminding them of the rivalry the two had last season.
Charles Leclerc
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Given the grid penalty handed to Leclerc for his new power unit, the Canadian Grand Prix was always going to be a damage limitation for Leclerc and his title hopes. However, with the Montreal track providing more overtaking, Leclerc was confident to have been able to move back into points position over the course of the race and the Monegasque made good progress early on. That was until his team let him down again, this time not a reliability or a strategy issue but a slow pit stop that placed him at the back of a DRS train. Thanks to the late safety car , Leclerc could pass the Alpines of Alonso and Ocon for a solid P5 finish.
Alpine
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P6 and P9 for Alpine despite Alonso’s time penalty makes them the fourth-best team behind the top three of recent seasons. This strong double point finish also moves them the P5 in the constructors’, just eight points behind their rivals McLaren. Considering how they were going in the 2022 F1 season, this was a good result for the French manufacturer. The fact that one of their cars started the race on the front row and both the cars managed to get points showed a sign of huge progress for the team heading into Silverstone.
Sergio Perez
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If you think Sergio Perez had a difficult qualifying session, you’ve got to feel for this man on race day. After seven consecutive finishes in the top 4 that includes a race win at Monaco, Sergio Perez’s stellar run of form goes to a halt as he had to pull his RB18 off the circuit in the opening stages of the race. This DNF for the Red Bull driver means that he is still second in the championship but the gap to him and third placed Leclerc got down to just three points.
Mick Schumacher’s Haas
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Things were going great for Haas and Mick Schumacher in the Canadian Grand Prix. The German driver reached Q3 for the first time in his F1 career and picked up P6 in qualifying. Schumacher was having a brilliant race and looked on the course of finally ending his F1 points drought – keeping Zhou behind him despite the pace advantage that the Alfa Romeo had. But instead of picking up his first F1 points, his race ended with a technical failure and had to retire his car.
McLaren
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The Canadian Grand Prix marked a miserable race for McLaren as they moved to the next round with the worst result possible as their constructors’ rivals Alpine secured their best result of the season so far. Things went awry for for the team in Montreal when they decided to double-stack under the VSC. Ricciardo had a slow pitstop that delayed Norris, only for him to suffer a longer pitstop when his team fitted the wrong tires on to his car. This mishap ultimately ended up putting Ricciardo in P11 and Norris in P15.
[Featured Image Credit: F1]
Shashank Iyer