LEWIS HAMILTON finished third whilst Mercedes team mate George Russell was forced to retire from the 2023 Canadian Grand Prix last weekend.
The race was won by Max Verstappen, who made it six wins from eight races and leads the 2023 championship with 195 points. The Dutchman’s 41st Grand Prix victory ties Ayrton Senna’s career total. Fernando Alonso in the Aston Martin finished in second place.
Starting from the second row, both Mercedes drivers made strong starts. Hamilton vaulted ahead of Alonso off the line to take second, with George putting the Spaniard under pressure but remaining fourth.
The Safety Car was deployed on lap 12 after Russell hit the wall at turn nine. He continued but dropped to the back of the field; both drivers pitting for the hard tyre.
Hamilton was forced to relinquish second place on lap 22 with Alonso passing.
The seven time champion kept touch with the Aston Martin and stopped on lap 40 for the medium tyre. Re-joining in third with a deficit of over five seconds, he began closing the gap but ultimately had to settle for the final spot on the podium.
Hamilton enthused: “It’s been a great weekend. To have this consistency and to be up on the podium once again here is fantastic.
“It’s quite an honour to be up on the podium with two other world champions.
”We didn’t quite have the pace today to challenge for more. We knew this wouldn’t be our strongest circuit though as we struggle in the low-speed corners in particular.
“We’ve still got a lot of work to do to add more performance and efficiency. We are slowly chipping away at those ahead though. I do believe we will get there at some stage and we are going in the right direction.”
Wolff, Team Principal & CEO said: “Today’s race was an encouraging one for the Team. We knew that Canada was going to be one of the more difficult circuits for us, so to come away with a podium is a solid result.
“We were also not too far away from Max (Verstappen), much closer than we would have expected at the beginning of the season. The margin is still large, so we have lots more work to do. We are on a positive trajectory though and the update package clearly works well.
”George was unlucky today. He hit a large kerb and tried to keep it cornering and ended up in the wall. He was pushing hard, and this car is still a little bit difficult at times.
“He ultimately retired with brake wear issues.”
Red Bull have now won eight races in a row to start the year, matching Mercedes’ best-ever start to a season in 2019, and they are only three behind McLaren’s record of 11 in a row at the start of 1988. Verstappen is the first driver to lead three consecutive races from start-to-finish since Sebastian Vettel in 2012.
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