Verstappen equals Senna with Red Bull’s 100th victory

Red Bull car designer Adrian Newey celebrates 100 wins with victor Max Verstappen, Fernando Alonso (second) and Lewis Hamilton (third).

If you like statistics and milestones, then Max Verstappen’s victory in the Canadian Grand Prix will have had plenty of appeal.

In winning the race for a second time, Verstappen equals the 41 race wins that the late Ayrton Senna, also a two-time Canadian winner, achieved before his untimely death in 1994. More importantly for Verstappen, his sixth win in eight races gives him a 69-point lead in the championship over teammate, Sergio Perez, and he scored Red Bull’s 100th grand prix victory.

It was a win that never really looked in doubt after Verstappen took pole position, the 25th of his F1 career, from the Haas of Nico Hulkenberg and Aston Martin of Fernando Alonso.

But Hulkenberg was given a three-place penalty for a red flag infringement in qualifying, promoting the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton to third.

That proved significant, because Hamilton got ahead of Alonso at the start of the race, and it would take Alonso half of the race to get the place back, his overtake using DRS showing that the upgrades that Aston Martin took to Montreal, worked.

While Verstappen built a steady lead, George Russell in the second Mercedes had tried to hang with Hamilton and Alonso, but hit the wall, damaging his front wing and rear wheels. He was able to continue after pitting, for some time, but eventually joined Logan Sergeant in the Williams, as a retirement.

Neither Hamilton or Alonso were able to put pressure on Verstappen for the lead, so settled into an enthralling battle for second place between two former world champions, with a combined age of 79! Alonso was nursing his car, having been told to “lift and coast” for several laps, because of a suspected fuel system problem. As Hamilton closed in, Aston team principal Mike Krack listened to the radio commentary between Hamilton and his team and said: “I think Lewis was told we had a brake issue”.

“We looked at each other and said: ‘Oh, I guess they know more about our car than we do! We should speak to all the Mercedes engineers.’ But no, we had no problem.”

Alonso said: “It was a battle with the Mercedes, and Lewis was pushing all the race, I didn’t have one lap where I could relax a little bit, so it was an amazing battle.”

“At the beginning, I had a little bit more pace, and at the end, I think Lewis had a little bit more pace, it was tough, a very demanding race, all 70 laps of qualifying today.”

He later suggested he didn’t really know what the problem was as “they didn’t tell me”.

Commenting after the race, Sky Sport presenter Jenson Button refuted that suggestion.

“When I interviewed Fernando earlier, and I asked about the rear brakes or fuel saving, lift and coast, he said, ‘I don’t know why they told me to’, he knows everything, Fernando, that’s going on within the team, he just doesn’t want to let us know.”

Button’s co-presenter suggested that Hamilton and Alonso had “admiration and respect” in their relationship these days, after their acrimonious season together at McLaren in 2007.

“No, it’s still a little salty in fact,” Button replied. “I think when they’re on track and talking about each other it’s very salty. Off track, it is very different when the emotions are not so high. Great to see them fighting on track.”

When they were side by side in the TV pen for post-race interviews, Hamilton was asked how he got the jump on Alonso at the start.

Glancing over to Alonso, Hamilton quipped: “His reactions are a little slow… it’s an age thing.”

Alonso laughed and gave Hamilton a slap on the back, holding up two fingers to signify he finished second and said: “Austria, two weeks’ time”.

It may be “salty” to use Button’s words, but the lighthearted nature of their exchange points more towards respect, even if they have not quite formed a mutual admiration society.

Hamilton was surprisingly happy with third place, given he spent much of the race in P2.

“Well, firstly, quite an honour to be up there with two world champions,” Hamilton said as if he was a rookie rather than a seven-time champion.

“I was really excited to be third and just trying to be in the mix. But, unfortunately, we didn’t have the pace today.”

In the cool-down room before going on the podium, Hamilton said to Verstappen that the Mercedes “sucks in the lower speed corners”.

Max Verstappen hitting a kerb hard was his only concern during his Canadian GP victory.

“We knew that this weekend, this wouldn’t be our strongest circuit as we struggle in the lower speed corners particularly, and that’s really where I was losing to Fernando and to Max - just on traction out of Turn 2, out of pretty much every corner.

“Max was a little bit gone, but I think our paces were a little bit closer today so we’re going in the right direction.”

“It’s honestly been a great weekend for us, I think we’re slowly chipping away, I think the Astons took a little bit of a step ahead this weekend when they had the upgrades but we’re working on bringing some more moving forwards.”

Verstappen doesn’t need anything to keep on moving forward and ahead of the chasing pack, it seems. His only anxious moment in the race came when he hit a kerb too hard.

“****, I almost knocked myself out on that kerb, haha!’ he said on the team car radio.

“Very happy right now, it was not a very straightforward race because the tyres were not really getting into their window,” Max said.

“It was very cold today compared to Friday and we were sliding around quite a bit. But yeah, we made it work. To win again today, win the 100th grand prix for the team, that’s incredible.”

Asked if the race had gone how he thought it would, Verstappen said he “expected more or less what we had today, but it was really difficult to keep the grip, the temperatures into the tyres, because the grip was disappearing quickly. That’s why the gap was not that big, and we had a few Safety cars here and there. But overall, we won and that’s the important thing.”

By the numbers, this race chalked them up. Verstappen’s 41st win, joining Senna on that number, with the next target, 50 wins and then Alain Prost’s total of 51. It is also 50 years at this event since the FIA first used a safety car in an F1 race. The 100th win for Red Bull, only the fifth constructor to reach that total, and also eight wins out of eight races this season. For Alonso, his sixth podium is twice the number of podiums he had in his previous seven seasons, giving new meaning to the adage “there’s life in the old dog yet”.

Montreal has not been kind to Alonso. He won the race in 2006 but failed to finish eight races there.

While Verstappen continued on his winning way, Perez has continued his recent pattern of qualifying poorly and performing only moderately better in the race, given he has the same machinery as his teammate. He started 12th and finished 6th.

In any other car, that would be a good recovery drive, but in a car that has won every race so far this year, Perez would get a C minus if the FIA handed out performance reports. Perez is aware that he has been under-performing in recent races, after winning two of the first four races and looking like a genuine title contender, and couldn’t beat the Ferrari duo.

“Yeah, I’m very, very concerned about that,” he said. “We just didn’t have the pace and we don’t understand why, that’s the weird thing, so we have to figure it out.”

Leclerc finished fourth and Carlos Sainz fifth, so an improved showing from Ferrari, but they remain only the fourth-best team, way behind Red Bull, and also hardly have Mercedes and Aston Martin in their sights. Leclerc was furious with his team for ignoring his preference to get off the inter tyres.

“I had a clear opinion and a clear intuition, and we went for something opposite,” he lamented. “That was obviously frustrating to accept it first then you’re putting yourself in a very difficult situation.”

Alex Albon finished seventh in the Williams and was voted driver of the race. He was at the front of a DRS train for many laps, emphasising the straight-line pace of the car. This was the team’s best result since Albon scored one point in the season-opening race in Bahrain.

But he was one minute behind Verstappen at the finish, the latter now the equal fifth-most winning driver in F1. Senna was 33 when he won his last race, the 1993 Australian GP, whereas Verstappen is only 25, eight years younger. The only question now is by what race he will join Senna as a three-time world champion.