Canadian Grand Prix: Max Verstappen wins to equal Ayrton Senna victories total

1 year ago 30

Red Bull's Max Verstappen equalled Ayrton Senna's vocation full of 41 victories with a ascendant triumph astatine the Canadian Grand Prix.

The Dutchman's sixth triumph successful 8 races this play gave him a 69-point pb successful the title and was the 100th triumph for his Red Bull team.

Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso passed Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes connected way to triumph a conflict for 3rd place.

Ferrari's Charles Leclerc recovered from qualifying 11th to instrumentality fourth.

Verstappen's winning borderline of 9.5 seconds was the smallest a Red Bull has had implicit different squad truthful acold this season, giving encouragement to the chasing pack.

But it was wide that 25-year-old Verstappen had not needed to widen himself and could astir surely person won by a acold larger margin.

And his accomplishment successful already matching Senna's vocation accomplishment astatine an property 9 years younger than the legendary Brazilian was erstwhile helium was killed successful a clang astatine the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix underlined the mode helium and Red Bull person dominated F1 for the past 2 seasons.

It besides raises the question of wherever Verstappen's vocation statistic whitethorn extremity - lone Alain Prost, Sebastian Vettel, Michael Schumacher and Hamilton are up of him successful victories and Prost's people of 51 and adjacent Vettel's 54 whitethorn beryllium reachable during this season, depending connected the level of his dominance.

Verstappen converted a superb rod presumption won successful the wet, 1.2 seconds wide of the field, into a pb astatine the archetypal country and ne'er looked backmost arsenic helium measured his gait to the aggravated battles down him.

A combat betwixt legends

Hamilton started third, 1 spot down Alonso, but the Mercedes operator passed the Aston Martin into the archetypal country aft a beardown start.

Alonso tracked the Mercedes intimately for the archetypal portion of the race, occasionally threatening down the backmost consecutive earlier the last chicane.

But Hamilton managed to bent connected successful 2nd until a information car was called connected thigh 12 erstwhile the 2nd Mercedes operator George Russell deed the partition astatine Turn Nine, leaving debris connected the track.

At the restart, Alonso began to situation the Mercedes much intimately and aft a fewer laps of unit edged adjacent capable to propulsion a determination into the last chicane connected thigh 23.

From past on, Alonso edged wide and though Hamilton switched to the mean tyres astatine his 2nd pit halt portion the Spaniard stuck with the hards they had utilized for their 2nd stint, the seven-time champion could bash thing astir his aged rival.

In the last laps, Hamilton was told Alonso appeared to beryllium nursing a rear brake problem. The Briton moved backmost towards his aged rival, but Alonso past began to borderline distant again arsenic the 3 biggest names successful F1 completed an all-star podium.

Russell remarkably rejoined aft a pit halt pursuing his collision with the partition and ran beyond three-quarters region earlier Mercedes asked him to discontinue the car.

A beardown fightback from Ferrari

Behind Alonso and Hamilton, Leclerc and team-mate Carlos Sainz recovered good from a hard qualifying league that near them 10th and 11th connected the grid.

Ferrari chose not to pit nether the Russell information car, switching to a one-stop strategy and moving an impressively agelong archetypal stint connected the mean tyres to bring Leclerc into contention for the last podium position.

After their pit stops, Leclerc began to adjacent connected Hamilton heading into the last 30 laps and it looked arsenic if Ferrari whitethorn beryllium capable to drawback 3rd place.

But Hamilton upped his gait to amusement helium had things nether power and though Leclerc stayed much oregon little wrong scope of the Mercedes, helium had to beryllium contented with fourth. Sainz followed him location successful fifth, up of the 2nd Red Bull of the underwhelming Sergio Perez successful sixth.

Watch connected iPlayer banner