Max Verstappen held off Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz Jr. to win Sunday’s Canadian Grand Prix and extend his 2022 FIA Formula One World Championship lead to 46 points over Oracle Red Bull Racing teammate Sergio Pérez.
The Dutchman started on pole position in Montreal and was relatively untroubled early on, however Mexican Pérez was forced to retire early with a problem on his power unit after starting down in 13th.
Verstappen came out third following his first pit stop, but reclaimed the lead ahead of the yellow flag for Yuki Tsunoda’s crash which allowed Sainz Jr. to close right behind however not enough to deny Verstappen victory.
Verstappen, 24, said: “The safety car didn’t help. Overall, they were very quick in the race. It was really exciting at the end and I was giving it everything I had. I could see he was pushing and charging – naturally it’s easier to charge with DRS – and the last few laps were a lot of fun.”
Scuderia AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly finished in 14th ahead of the next race at Silverstone on July 3 with Oracle Red Bull Racing now 76 points ahead of Ferrari in the constructors’ standings.
Oracle Red Bull Racing
MAX VERSTAPPEN – 1st
“The weekend went pretty smoothly for me, and we can be happy with that. Overall the Ferraris were very quick and strong in the race. It was really exciting at the end; the last two laps were a lot of fun, I was flat-out racing and I was giving it everything I had. The safety car towards the end of the race of course didn’t help, Carlos had fresher tyres so that made it difficult, I would have preferred to attack than defend, but luckily it worked out. Also, this year we seem to be quick on the straights so that helps a lot. The next race is Silverstone, I’m looking forward to going back to the more traditional tracks. We have to keep focused as a team and find improvements wherever we can.”
SERGIO PÉREZ – DNF
“We think it was a gearbox issue and I got stuck in gear unfortunately. Things were looking good, I had a good start, I was on the hard tyre and making progress. I had finally got Daniel in the McLaren out of the DRS zone and it should have been a race where I could have worked my way through the field, so it’s a big shame. I felt I had plenty of potential in my race to make up a lot of places and recover good points. We need to keep on top of the reliability because a zero, when you are fighting for the Championship, is very painful and costly. You go into new regulations and there is always going to be new problems to face. Today hurts a lot, it has been a weekend to forget for me, so I want to forget about today and move onto Silverstone.”
CHRISTIAN HORNER – Team Principal and CEO
“Max was amazing today, he was under so much pressure, particularly a the end of the race, he’s been superb all weekend – every session through practice, qualifying and then the race. The Ferrari was very quick today, with the DRS zones the way they are here he couldn’t break it and Carlos was cruising up to the back of him and you could see them recharging their battery to have another go time-after-time, but Max kept his concentration really well and it was an absolutely amazing performance. It was a frustrating weekend for Checo and we think he had a suspected gearbox issue, so we’ll need to get the car back and have a look at what happened. It’s exciting to now head towards Silverstone.”
Scuderia AlphaTauri
PIERRE GASLY – 14th
“Starting the race out of position we thought we’d go for a different strategy, so we pitted a bit earlier, but it didn’t really make much of a difference. We were struggling a lot with grip, sliding around a lot in these conditions, and we just didn’t have the pace to fight in the top 10. We will have to analyse everything, but objectively we were just too slow in the race. Likewise, we didn’t get lucky with the Virtual Safety Car, but at the end of the day it wouldn’t have changed our end result that much. We need to use the gap now to work out what we could’ve done better, so we can arrive in Silverstone as best prepared as possible.”
YUKI TSUNODA – DNF
“I’ve already been to the garage to apologise to all the team, I just pushed too much on pit exit and unfortunately I went into the wall. The pace was good today, and we’d made a strong recovery up until that point, even if it was hard to overtake, so I’m disappointed with that ending.”
JODY EGGINTON – Technical Director
“Quite simply, it was a disappointing race for us. Starting from last on the grid due to the PU change, Yuki put in a strong stint for the first half of the race and managed his tyres well. He was able to get into a position within a shout of scoring points but unfortunately he went off soon after exiting the pits, following his second stop, and ended his race on the spot. We opted for a very early first stop with Pierre, to try and give him some free air, this put him out of phase with some cars around him and additionally the VSC’s did not fall well for him. This made his progress more challenging and, with the balance on his first set of hard tyres not being great, it was not possible to make enough progress to get into a point scoring position today. This result means we have lost some ground in the midfield battle and we need to come back strong in the next race to recover.”