It was the fifth win on Montreal’s Circuit Gilles Villeneuve for Hamilton and the 45th of his Formula One career.
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Hamilton reiterated his dedication in the post-race press conference as he explained how he hoped to emulate Ali’s character both inside and outside their respective sporting arenas.
“I didn’t want to give up that position”.
He added: “Overall a great weekend for us”. The German is 24 points ahead after six of 21 races. I was really happy and we pushed hard and I think the work that we started straight after Monaco, starts to pay off, we understand better the vehicle and we are working during the race weekend in a way that we are able to find the right balance and this is going to pay off because I think today was an interesting race.
The world championship leader also admitted that his Mercedes vehicle was struggling to conserve fuel and proved key as to why he couldn’t make an overtaking pass stick on Verstappen in the closing moments off the race. The behavior of the auto was pretty ok in certain parts of the track, but in some others, with the cool conditions, I was struggling with the tires.
Now seven races into the season, Rosberg’s lead over Hamilton in the championship table is down to nine points.
In my point of view, I know that we have the best people in terms of strategy.
Hamilton, who said he couldn’t stop thinking about Ali over the last 15 laps, then climbed onto the top of his auto and began shadow-boxing before jumping to the pavement for a bit of the Ali Shuffle. “We’re going to continue to improve this auto and we need to try to keep on a roll if possible”. Rosberg managed to keep going and took fifth place. Starting at the beginning, Lewis had a bad start, mine was decent and Sebastian got a super start.
And then it happened again when Hamilton had switched to soft tires and Vettel was chasing him on the same tires which had 13 laps less use.
Rosberg gradually forced his way back through the field despite suffering a right rear puncture and on the penultimate lap tried desperately to overtake the Red Bull of Dutch teenager Max Verstappen for fourth. “It wasn’t fair. I brake for animals and Lewis doesn’t”.
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“They were at the apex of Turn 1 so I saw them and I just went wide into Turn 1”. It was very windy today, I maybe struggled with the wind behind. “In Barcelona, I went round the outside of Lewis and it worked out really well, I went for the same one again today and he did a really hard, racing manoeuvre”. Kimi Raikkonen finished sixth in the second Ferrari, ahead of Australian Daniel Ricciardo in the second Red Bull and Nico Hulkenberg of Force India. Renault’s Jolyon Palmer had to retire 10 or so laps later with a water leak, and Williams driver Felipe Massa also failed to finish due to a water system issue that caused his power unit to overheat on lap 36.
