The Englishman and the Dutchman equalized up to the thousandth in Montreal, but the one from Mercedes will take the lead because he scored before. Lando Norris was third.
If Formula 1 arrived mixed at the Canadian GP, the ninth date of the 2024 season, after the qualification of the Montreal semi-permanent, a new card was added to the deck: Mercedes. The World Cup reached its second visit of the year to America with three different winners in the last three events and with different brands. Lando Norris had won in Miami, Max Verstappen continued the celebration in Emilia-Romagna and Charles Leclerc had just fulfilled his dream in Monaco. In all this mix the Silver Arrows had not appeared, but George Russell hit the top of the table and took pole position for the Canadian event. With a detail: he tied the time with Verstappen!
Gone are the days of Red Bull’s overwhelming dominance, at least at this stage of the tournament. The three-time champion warned during the Canadian weekend that there is a problem in the design of the RB20 and that on some tracks they know they will suffer. He comes from having a very bad time in Monaco and in Montreal he didn’t look competitive. However, they worked a lot behind closed doors in the Milton Keyenes team’s box and put Verstappen back into the battle. So much so that He kept the pole time: 1m12s000, exactly the same time that Russell had achieved a while before. And precisely for that reason, because the Englishman from Mercedes got it first, he managed to break the grid to take his second pole position (Hungary 2022 had been the previous one). The only time in history that the pole time had been tied in an F1 race had been in the 1997 European GP, in Jerez de la Frontera, with a triple stop by Jacques Villeneuve, Michael Schumacher and Heinz-Harald Frentzen .
And Mercedes just returned. And he could have had both cars ahead, because Lewis Hamilton had dominated the third test and was always ahead in the classification. But he failed on the last lap and was condemned to starting from seventh place. Ahead will be, in addition to Russell and Verstappen, Norris and Oscar Piastri, third and fourth confirming once again the good moment of McLaren, the surprising Daniel Ricciardo (fifth with the Racing Bull) and Fernando Alonso, sixth with an improved Aston Martin and that he gave signs that he also wants to join that new deck that is F1.
“It feels so good, so much hard work in the factory. I hope this is the start of our season. Now we have to fight for the victory, we can keep Verstappen behind,” said Russell. who will seek his second success in the category. A fact that encourages the Englishman: in nine of the last ten editions of the Canadian GP, the winner started on the front row. Of course, that also gives Max reasons to think about success. “We had a good qualifying, it was a difficult weekend for us and being second is very good. In Monaco it was not a track for us, this weekend was not good at the start either. We will see the weather, the rain, the tires,” said the three-time champion, who started Friday very difficult with a problem with the electric motor, but, once again, he put his weekend back together to be in the fight again. Quite the opposite of what he experienced with his teammate Checo Pérez, who was left out in Q1 for the second race in a row…
If to the open and mixed panorama that F1 has been offering in general in the last races and in the Canadian GP in particular (three different brands in the first three boxes) we must add the threat of rain for race time. If what was announced by the meteorological service comes true, the mix will be total and anything can happen. The intrigue is a breath of fresh air that F1 needed to shake the drowsiness caused by Verstappen’s overwhelming, and fair, dominance.
CLASSIFICATION RESULT
