Canadian Grand Prix: Close Encounters of the Bird Kind

For a race that so often serves up all manner of excitement, this was a relatively low-key Canadian Grand Prix.

The rain didn’t rain, the punchy Wall Of Champions didn’t pack a punch and Ferrari’s strategists didn’t strategise.

There wasn’t even an appearance from those groundhogs that occasionally amble carelessly on to the circuit, although there was a cameo from a couple of seagulls (pictured). But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t plenty to talk about. For example…

Tears for souvenirs

Ah, Ferrari. It was as if the great Enzo Ferrari was strutting his stuff in the finest Italian suit, with his zip wide open.

Mamma mia. Here we go again with Ferrari’s strategic horror show.

Let’s be clear – Ferrari’s latest upgrades, especially to their turbo, look to be a huge step forward and Sebastian Vettel was back to his jokey best after the race, even gate-crashing a Lewis Hamilton interview to talk seagulls. More of that later.

Vettel’s start was one of the most surprising I can remember – he was a good 16metres behind Hamilton on the starting grid and yet he shot past both Mercedes as if they had put diesel in their tanks.

Then he pulled a respectable gap to Hamilton, staying out of DRS range and keeping the Merc honest.

At which point, the Virtual Safety Car put in an appearance to let marshalls remove Jenson Button’s car, which had gone up in smoke with its second engine problem of the weekend.

Ferrari opted to pit Vettel from the lead, hoping to save valuable seconds even though it meant surrendering the lead to Hamilton.

Two things happened: safety car conditions were lifted as Vettel entered the pits, slashing the potential time he could save.

And Hamilton was released into clean air (see below) and gifted a race win.

Vettel pushed as hard as he could, making several mistakes in the process but staying out of the Wall Of Champions, and finished second.

It was a ballsy strategic call but it was the wrong one. When Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene (pictured) arrived to admit that, yes, Ferrari had made another tactical mistake, his eyes were so red it looked like he’d borrowed Christopher Lee’s contact lenses.

Could they have won? Yes – Vettel would have been extremely difficult for Hamilton to pass on circuit and, in pitting Vettel, Ferrari threw away the biggest advantage they had.

Meanwhile, Kimi Raikkonen was wrestling with the other Ferrari in the midfield, having to save fuel and struggling to get his tyres up to their operating temperature. All this after being blitzed by Vettel in qualifying.

The word this week has been that Ferrari want to hold on to him for another year as a solid second driver – you have to think that, with all the young talent coming through at the moment, it’s going to get more and more difficult for Kimi’s agent to negotiate a good deal with the Maranello outfit, no matter how many points he’s scored.

Lennox Lewis Hamilton

Two wins on the trot, a team-mate in the doldrums, the championship race back on with a vengeance.

Lewis Hamilton has definitely found his mojo again and his team-mate is suffering as a result.

Yes, both he and Nico Rosberg had appalling starts and, yes, they did bump wheels in the first corner, while Vettel showed them a clean pair of heels (Rosberg later said he was ‘pissed off’ at that first corner bump but ‘that was racing’).

But, once Hamilton was gifted the lead by Ferrari, he never looked back.

Other than one mistake when he ran wide at turn 10, Hamilton said the rest of his race had been faultless – he was ‘In the groove’.

One suspects that he would have been less happy had he been forced to pass Vettel on track – as Rosberg’s race showed, the Mercedes cars may be invincible when running at the front, but stick them in the turbulent air behind another car and it all goes a bit wrong. Even if he hadn’t suffered a slow puncture, a DRS problem and an embarrassing last-lap spin, Rosberg never looked like he would be threatening the podium.

Hamilton dedicated his win to Muhammad Ali, radioing ‘Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee’ on the slowing-down lap and doing an Ali shuffle when he got out of his car.

He threw a few punches (pictured), and boasted that his car ‘floated’ for the last part of the race. He was able to ‘sting’ Vettel by matching his fastest laps and spent the last 15-20 laps thinking about Ali. You get the idea.

There may have been more boxing metaphors than F1 metaphors in his interviews but, if Hamilton really was having it so easy that he spent the last quarter of the race dreaming about Ali, you might as well stick his name on the 2016 championship now (heavyweight division).

Young guns

Max Verstappen may have been outqualified by his Red Bull team-mate Daniel Ricciardo but, where it counted, he thumped him.

Ricciardo got caught up with the battling Mercedes at the start and ended up behind Verstappen, who appeared to be the slower of the two.

The team warned 18-year-old Verstappen not to hold Ricciardo up … as is his way, he ignored their hints to let Ricciardo past and went on to finish a creditable fourth, missing out on another podium because of tyre degradation and keeping Rosberg at bay in a thrilling end-of-race tussle. Team boss Christian Horner described Verstappen’s defending as ‘vigorous’ – I guess that’s what counts as a loaded compliment.

Meanwhile, Verstappen’s former Toro Rosso team-mate Carlos Sainz (pictured) battled from 20^th to ninth position in the day’s best drive.

Sainz, 21, is becoming one of the sport’s hottest properties. He is comprehensively out-performing Daniil Kvyat, who was demoted from Red Bull to Toro Rosso just weeks ago and whose F1 career is withering as rapidly as Sainz’s blossoms.

It’s hard to believe that Kvyat was on the Shanghai podium less than two months ago – there’s one guy who’s having a really bad year at the office.

Guys and gulls

I’ve heard some bizarre excuses from F1 drivers but Vettel added a new one to the list – he was forced into a mistake by ‘stupid seagulls’.

Seagullgate first reared its head in the podium waiting room, where Vettel told Hamilton: ‘I watched the seagulls and I locked up. That’s when you caught up.’

Seagulls? No, me neither.

But Seb wasn’t going to let this king of excuses rest.

Shortly after, Lewis was doing yet another cheery post-race interview (it’s not tricky to tell the difference between a thundercloud and Lewis when he’s won) when a beaming Sebastian Vettel gatecrashed proceedings, with more tales of suicidal seagulls.

‘He (Lewis) is not braking for animals!’ said Vettel. ‘You should give him a hard time because of that. Two seagulls at turn one! I’m a racing driver, so I have to find some kind of excuse!’

Did you see the seagulls Lewis? Nope. How about you, interviewers? Nope. How about you, Sky VT people? Nope, but we’ll sure as heck take a look.

Seb added: ‘I had my eyes into turn one and I saw this stupid couple of seagulls, all relaxed. I had my eyes so deep into the apex I just locked up.’

Lewis may not have seen the gulls but he did let slip that one had pooped on his visor. I guess you’d do the same if you’d just had Vettel (top) skidding past you at 150mph.

Remarkably, the telly people did eventually track down onboard footage (pictured) from the German’s car showing that he had, indeed, been distracted by a couple of birds.

This is not exactly a new excuse though. It’s precisely the sort of explanation James Hunt would have used in 1976 – and he became world champion that year.

Maybe Seb’s on to something…