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The start of the race saw Sebastian Vettel leap frog both Mercedes drivers and meant he was, for a short time, leading the race. Nico Rosberg dropped from second place to 10th at the start of the race after touching with Lewis Hamilton, the Mercedes encountered some problems and struggled to make it through the pack leaving Rosberg in 5th place at the end of the race.

The first win of the season still alluded Vettel, he finished in second place and the Williams of Valtteri Bottas took the last place on the podium after an impressive climb from P7.

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The penultimate lap of the race made for exciting watching, Max Verstappen was set to finish P4 until Rosberg came up behind and managed to overtake, unfortunately for Rosberg he lost the back end of his Mercedes and was unable to keep the position.

Jenson Button and his McLaren had to retire after pulling up at the side of the track causing a virtual safety car. The VSC had great impact on Vettel’s race as the team decided to pit him on lap 12, insuring his race would be a two stopper. Mercedes had the better strategy of the day making sure Hamilton had a one-stop race.

The one remaining McLaren of Fernando Alonso finished just outside the points in 11th place. Force India secured two point finishing places with Nico Hulkenberg finishing 8th and his team mate Sergio Perez finishing 10th.

Felipe Massa, Jolyon Palmer and Jenson Button were the only three to not finish the race.

Rosberg continues to lead the championship however his lead of 43 points has now decreased to nine championship points.

Podium Interviews

Lewis Hamilton: Firstly, I want to say a big thank you to everybody who came out here today and made the atmosphere the way it is. Thank you everyone here. We come here every year and we have the best week. The city, they just put on such a great event. The ambiance, the atmosphere is better than ever. Today, I had another really bad start, I’m not quite sure why, I think probably I overheated my clutch. Sebastian and Nico got quite a good run down to Turn One, tyres are cold, big understeer, and I feel very grateful that me and Nico didn’t damage anything on our cars. And otherwise it was just trying to chase this guy down. He was so quick out there. The car felt fantastic and it was set up just right with great work from the engineers and mechanic. Hey man, I won my first grand prix here in 2007, so this just feels like such a blessing.

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Sebastian Vettel: Lewis was a bit too quick! That was the issue. No, I think we had a great
weekend. Obviously a fantastic start and then, yeah, lap one was a bit hairy, I just struggled to stop the car in the last corner. It was very windy today and maybe I struggled a bit with the wind from behind but I was pushing all race. I think we committed fairly early to a different strategy, which we were planning to come back. Obviously then Lewis had the chance to stay out and see what the tyres were doing and I think probably the tyres lasted a bit better than what we expected, so that made it quite tricky to refresh the tyres and close the gap but overall a great weekend for us. We struggled a little bit in the last couple of races and the beginning of the season and now to see that the car has performance and to unleash it, it was a really fun race, I really enjoyed it.

Valtteri Bottas: Well, I’m really pleased with today. As a team, it was really a strong one for us, really good strategy, really good pit stop; the time was perfect, the car felt really good today. I felt I was pretty on it today. So it’s great to be here. I really want to thank Williams, thank you guys; everybody made an amazing job. Thank you Montreal, you’ve been really good to me.

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