Grand Prix race news, driver standings, porpoise

• The Canadian Grand Prix returns for the first time since 2019 due to COVID travel restrictions.
• The popular spot on the F1 calendar ended in controversy the last time Lewis Hamilton finished second but won.
• “Porpoise” is the big story this year, but the rebound shouldn’t be as bad as Azerbaijan’s.

The Canadian Grand Prix returns for the first time since 2019, as the 2020 and 2021 races have been canceled due to the country’s COVID immigration restrictions.

Below, we take a look at what you need to know about this year’s Round 9 race in Montreal.

When are the qualifiers and the race:

Practice 1 — Friday, 2:00 pm ET

Practice 2 — Friday, 5:00 pm ET

Practice 3 — Saturday, 1:00 p.m. ET

Qualifying — Saturday, 4:00 p.m. ET

Race — Sunday, 2:00 p.m. ET

How to get tickets:

All grandstand and general admission tickets are sold out at GPCanada.ca. However, there are a limited number of tickets available in some sections of the terrace.

On the secondary ticket market, Sunday tickets start at $250, and three-day general admission tickets are around $300.

This week’s tires:

Pirelli will bring C3, C4 and C5 tires to Montrealthe softest compounds in your portfolio.

Pirelli

Driver Classification:

After the first three races of the season, Max Verstappen dropped 46 points behind Charles Leclerc. Since then, however, the defending champion has won four of five races and now holds a 34-point lead over the Ferrari driver. Sergio Perez’s recent form has also put him ahead of Leclerc, but he is still 21 points behind his Red Bull team-mate Verstappen.

Meanwhile, George Russell has finished quietly in the top five in every race this season and is just one win away from making this an intriguing four-driver title race. Sainz and Hamilton would each need a miracle at this point.

1. Max Verstappen, Red Bull, 150 points
2. Sergio Perez, Red Bull, 129
3. Charles Leclerc, Ferrari, 116
4. George Russell, Mercedes, 99
5. Carlos Sainz, Ferrari, 83
6. Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes, 62

The favorites:

Since Red Bull fixed its reliability issues earlier in the season, every event has been a two-day story.

Charles LeClerc has continued to dominate qualifying sessions, taking pole at six rounds and starting from the front row at all eight. But after winning two of the first three races, he hasn’t won since: he had to retire his car twice and only finished on the podium once (P2 at Miami).

However, race day has become the spectacle of Red Bull and Max Verstappen. Since he failed to finish two of the first three races, Verstappen has finished on the podium in five consecutive races, winning four.

As a result, both Red Bull drivers are the betting favorites (via Covers.com):

1. Max Verstappen, Red Bull-120
2. Sergio Perez, Red Bull +275
3. Charles Leclerc, Ferrari +333
4. Carlos Sainz, Ferrari +1,400
5. George Russell, Mercedes +3,300
6. Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes +3,300

What to watch for:

1. How will the driver’s body react?

In what could be the most grueling part of the 2022 F1 calendar, this year’s Canadian GP is just seven days after the Azerbaijan GP, ​​which is 5,500 miles (9,000 km) and a 15-hour flight from Montreal.

To make matters worse, the Baku race was the most grueling of the season, as it turned out to be a perfect storm of factors that cause “porpoises”, where Formula One cars start to bounce when they reach high speeds. Lewis Hamilton couldn’t get out of his car after the race due to back pain, and Daniel Ricciardo said he couldn’t speak badly enough about it, likening it to being dribbled over the head by an NBA player.

Will Montreal be better? Maybe. However, like Baku, Montreal is a bumpy track with long straights. Hopefully the engineers will be able to reduce it a bit, but don’t be surprised if the drivers are still complaining of back pain after the race.

2. What strategies will the teams use?

The Canadian Grand Prix is ​​usually a one-stop strategy race. However, three years have passed since the last race, the track has certainly changed and the Pirelli tires are new.

So there’s a lot of mystery surrounding this year’s race, as Pirelli director of motorsport Mario Isola pointed out (via The Checkered Flag).

“Canada will pose a number of question marks for teams,” Isola said. “The weather is often variable, all previous data is three years old and we have a completely different range of tires with new compounds and structures on a track that is hardly ever used, which will lead to a very high degree of evolution.”

Even in 2019, when it was less of a mystery, we saw all three tire compounds at the start of the race.

F1TV

3. Will Ferrari rediscover its dominance on race day?

Since Charles Leclerc finished second in Miami, he has failed to finish two races, and a failed strategy in the pits cost him a chance to win in Monaco.

Ferrari still has the fastest cars. If Leclerc can continue his dominance in qualifying, and if he can find his way to the finish, the race could be his.

4. Will Mercedes finally be able to find the right balance and join the chase?

George Russell has finished every race in the top five despite battling a car all season that Mercedes hasn’t quite got right.

The team seems to be stuck in no man’s land: its problems are big enough that it can’t compete with Red Bull and Ferrari, but they’re close enough that they don’t think they need a major car overhaul.

If Mercedes can finally find the right balance to control the car’s bounces without losing its speed, there are plenty of races left for Russell to make a championship charge.

Podium prediction:

1. Charles Leclerc
2. max verstappen
3. george russell

What happened the last time F1 was in Montreal:

Even though it was only three years ago, the grid looked very different.

F1TV

The 2019 Canadian Grand Prix was one of the most controversial in recent times as Lewis Hamilton finished second but took the win.

Then-Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel led late in the race but was handed a 5-second penalty for running Hamilton off the track. So all Hamilton had to do was finish within five seconds of Vettel, which he did, and he was given P1.

That led to Vettel’s famous moment of rebellion after the race when he swapped the first- and second-place car markers.

—Formula 1 (@F1) June 16, 2022

Lost in the controversy was this iconic Guenther Steiner moment where he had to interrupt one of his engineers to berate Kevin Magnussen for complaining about the car too much.

—Cork Gaines (@CorkGaines) June 15, 2022