F1: Canadian GP – as it happened

Rosberg puts a brave face on things and Bottas praises his team’s “dynamic” strategy.

So, Hamilton has increased his championship lead to 17 points over Rosberg after leading throughout in Montreal. It was a pretty dry race at the front but Vettel and Massa provided plenty of entertainment slicing through the field to finish P5 and P6 respectively. Next up: Austria. That it’s from me, thanks for reading. Bye!

Lewis Hamilton: “I love Montreal. I love this track, this city, really a fantastic weekend and great to get back to the top step. Nico was quick but I felt like I always had under control. It was a great race, I don’t know how it was to watch.” He then slips into some panto back and forth with the crowd. “Did I need this win?!” he asks. “Yes!” the handful of fans listening reply.

Hamilton lifts a meaty trophy in the air, he looks quietly chuffed with himself. Bottas celebrates third with Raikkonen levels of glee (not much). A bit of light champagne spraying follows and this week no one walks off in a strop. Here’s Ted with the interviews...

Sky’s Ted Kravitz has the role of conducting the podium interviews today. It makes a nice change to have an F1 expert rather than Arnold Schwarzenegger or Benedict Cumberbatch.

It’s a fine day for Williams too with Valtteri Bottas finishing third after Raikkonen’s spin at the hairpin allowed him to jump a spot. Massa has had a good day too, climbing from P16 to P6, while Vettel moved from P18 to P5 with some impressive passes.

Here’s how they finished in Canada:

Lap 70: Hamilton is told to look after his fuel as he begins his final lap, and he replies with a short, sharp “leave me to it.” Hamilton has enough of a gap to see it home without Rosberg in his mirrors and he’s grabbed his fourth win in Montreal! It hasn’t been a classic by any means, but Hamilton was near-flawless right from lights out. Rosberg claims second to minimise the championship points damage.

Lap 68/70: Bottas is going to become the first driver outside of Mercedes and Ferrari this season to finish on the podium. He’s 30secs from Rosberg, who is 3.5secs from Hamilton and it looks like the chase is over.

Lap 66/70: Hamilton does love Montreal. His fourth victory in Canada is almost his now as he pushes to extend the gap to Rosberg to 2secs. Vettel, who started in P18 on the grid, isn’t going to catch Raikkonen but it’s a stunning effort nonetheless to finish 5th, if he does so.

Lap 64/70: Maldonado puts up absolutely no fight – rare for him – as Massa passes to take P6. At the front Rosberg hammers in his fastest lap of the race but that gap to Hamilton is still fluttering around 1.3secs. It’s going to be another close finish but Hamilton looks comfortable, for now.

Lap 62/70: The key battles in the top ten are for P1 (Rosberg chasing Hamilton), P6 Massa closing in on Maldonado), and P9 (Grosjean less than half a second behind Kvyat).

Lap 60/70: Hamilton is told to lift and coast in order to look after his fuel. He wants to know how far from the braking zone he should start to coast: “100m?” he asks. “50m is enough,” is the reply from the team.

Lap 58: Oh dear. McLaren’s radio engineer wearily tells Button: “Bring the car in to box.” Button’s race is over and he joins his team-mate, Fernando Alonso, in the garage.

Lap 56: Vettel takes Maldonado and he’s up to P5, what a race he’s put together from 18th on the grid and he’s now one place behind his Ferrari team-mate, Raikkonen. With 25 laps to go here’s how things look at the front:

1 Ham 2 Ros 3 Bot 4 Rai 5 Vet 6 Mal 7 Mas 8 Hul 9 Kvy 10 Gro

Lap 54: Stevens was straight on the radio fuming with Grosjean, while the Lotus driver likewise was quickly on to his team, claiming: “He hit me! He hit me!” but the stewards were quick to punish Grosjean for that error. At the front Hamilton is 1.3secs clear of Rosberg. Are we set for a thrilling battle to the line? Probably not but let’s get excited hoping so.

Lap 52: Grosjean cuts across Will Stevens and in doing so punctures his rear left on Stevens’ front wing! A crazy error and he’s been punished with a five second time penalty.

Lap 50/70: There’s been plenty of incident at the hairpin this weekend: it’s where Hamilton slid off the track in the rain earlier this weekend and where Raikkonen spun to give up P3 to Bottas, which all reminds me of this video from 1991, when Nigel Mansell pulled up on his way to winning on the final lap having waved to the grandstand a minute earlier.

Lap 48: Mercedes are all over the radio pretty much stoking up their boys for a last 10 lap showdown. Meanwhile Fernando Alonso is retiring from the grand prix, the third race in the row that he’s done so. A pretty torrid season for McLaren gets worse.

Lap 46: Vettel weaves left and then right before attacking down the inside of Hulkenberg at the final chicane. The Force India spins to avoid the wall of champions and Vettel is past into P8. Vettel is quickly on the radio to defend himself: “I did not touch him,” he insists, and the replay suggests he didn’t. That incident might be looked into but their didn’t seem a lot in it.

Lap 44: Kimi Raikkonen posts the fastest lap of the race with a 1:16.987. He’s enjoying those nice and grippy supersofts and is closing the 20 secs gap to Bottas (P3) ahead.

Lap 42: Raikkonen makes a slightly ragged stop and is back out in P4 with Grosjean only 2 secs behind him.

Lap 40: Out in front the Mercedes are racing their own race. Rosberg is 1.5 secs behind his team-mate. Rosberg has been asked to look after his brakes while Hamilton has been told to conserve his fuel, so neither are pushing with everything they’ve got, for now.

Lap 38: Mercedes to Rosberg: “Brakes are now critical.” He’s told to ease off and wait until later in the race to attack the race-leader, Lewis Hamilton. Massa has been flying and finally comes in for a pit, dropping from P6 to P9 and coming out inches in front of Kvyat. The intention is for that stop to be Massa’s only one of the race, but to get to lap 70 on supersoft tyres is going to be a big ask.

Lap 36: We’ve passed the halfway point in Montreal. Vettel goes in for a tyre change, a fresh set of soft tyres.

Lap 34: Fernando Alonso makes his first pit of the race and feeds out right in front of Hamilton (but a lap back), slowing the race leader a little. Most of the drivers are now on the soft tyres rather than the supersofts which they started the race with, which should mean less grip, more durability.

Lap 32: Rosberg’s pit is very efficient: shoes off, shoes on, and he’s quickly back out on the track. He’s made up a second or so, now 2secs behind Hamilton.

Hamilton is quickest so far but Vettel is pushing hard from the back of the field:

Lap 30: Bottas pits, desperate to return to the track in front of Raikkonen following that error... and Bottas pulls it off! The Williams driver is up to P3. Hamilton pits too and it’s very smooth, he stay in P1. Rosberg, who runs wide at the hairpin after locking up, is expected to pit shortly.

Lap 28: Raikkonen pits and comes back out in P4, but the Fin spins at the hairpin with the sort of 360 you’d see from some kids in a Tesco carpark, smoke billowing around him. “Exactly the same happened last year!” he shouts down the radio.

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Lap 25: “We must save fuel,” say McLaren to Alonso. The Spaniard reacts pretty frankly spelling out his frustrations which have been building up all season.

Lap 23: Vettel doesn’t seem to have a huge amount of grip and is slipping across the track at the chicane exits but his straight line speed gives him the opportunity to get past first Alonso, then Verstappen, and now Carlos Sainz: he’s up to P13.

Lap 21: There’s a very entertaining battle going on for P14 where Max Verstappen is attempting to hold off Alonso and Vettel. Alonso jinks to the right and tries to hold off Vettel as they approach the final chicane... and does so. Massa meanwhile is up to 7th after passing Kvyat.

Lap 18: Maldonado pits and rejoins in P13, right on Daniil Kvyat’s tail whose Red Bull is going to be vulnerable against the Lotus behind him.

Lap 16: So things are going very smoothly for Hamilton out in front. He’s 3secs clear of Rosberg who is in turn 3secs clear of Raikkonen. Bottas in P4 is more than 10secs in front of Grosjean’s Lotus.

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Lap 14: Hulkenberg complains over the radio that he is struggling for grip on his supersoft tyres while Massa’s Mercedes powered engine makes it effortless overtaking Ricciardo and his Renault powered Red Bull. The Brazilian is up to P10 having started 15th.

Here’s the running after 12 laps in Montreal:

1 Ham 2 Ros 3 Rai 4 Bot 5 Gro 6 Hul 7 Mal 8 Kvy 9 Per 10 Ric 11 Mas 12 Eri 13 Sai 14 Alo 15 Ves 16 Nas 17 Vet (1 pit) 18 But 19 Ste 20 Mer

Lap 11: Sensational driving as Ericsson and Massa go wheel-to-wheel and come millimetres from touching! Ericsson holds the inside on turn one but finds himself on the outside at turn two and is forced to give up P11 – brilliant from both to avoid a collision there.

Lap 9: Vettel takes a very early pit with just 8 of 70 laps – does he have a puncture? The pit is shockingly slow and the German has an extra few seconds.

Lap 7: Massa is all over the back of Ericsson’s Sauber in P11 but can’t find a gap to attack. He’s got another problem, too, with Vettel filling his wing mirrors.

Lap 5: Massa brakes late down the inside and takes Alonso on turn one, and Vettel tries the same trick a lap later. He gets it wrong but takes the McLaren down the circuit’s longest straight. Vettel is now up to P13.

Lap 3: That was a pretty incident free start and a perfect one for Hamilton, already digging out a one-second lead to deny Rosberg the chance to use DRS. Vettel is jumping plenty of places and is already up to 14th.

Lap 1: Hamilton gets a quick start leaving Rosberg and Raikkonen to fend off Bottas and Grosjean behind them. Vettel jumps two places up to P16 while Jenson Button serves his drive-through penalty for failing to take part in qualifying.

The drivers get away on their formation lap. Lights out shortly! Over the radio Hamilton thanks his team for their hard work this week: “Really appreciated,” he says. Stick with us, here’s the sort of commentary you can expect throughout.

Mercedes’ Toto Wolff on the threat of Kimi Raikkonen: “You have to always be worried and he’s good at making tyres last. They’re our enemy.”

Around ten minutes until things get under way in Canada. Here’s the grid, bookended by British world champions each with reason to be fed up with their teams right now.

1 Hamilton 2 Rosberg

3 Raikkonen 4 Bottas

5 Grosjean 6 Maldonado

7 Hulkenberg 8 Kvyat

9 Ricciardo 10 Perez

11 Sainz 12 Ericsson

13 Alonso 14 Nasr

15 Massa 16 Merhi

17 Stevens 18 Vettel

19 Verstappen 20 Button

Last year’s race in Montreal certainly didn’t disappoint. Hamilton pulled over in lap 48, car billowing with smoke following brakes failure, leaving Massa to chase Vettel, Perez, Ricciardo and Rosberg. Ricciardo picked off race-leader Rosberg with two laps remaining, before Perez clipped Massa and both piled into the barriers in a huge crash at the start of the final lap to leave Ricciardo to cruise to his first F1 grand prix victory under yellow flags.

If someone is to stop Mercedes’ dominance in Montreal it will most likely be Kimi Raikkonen. The weekend has brought mixed fortunes for Ferrari after introducing a new power unit.

The Fin will start from P3 after qualifying four tenths back from Rosberg and not showing the improved performance Ferrari were expecting – though the real boost might show in race pace. But it was a disastrous qualifying for his team-mate: Vettel suffered power failure in Q1 before being demoted three places after overtaking Ricardo Merhi under red flags, and will start from P18.

Then again, it’s a fun track to rip through the field from the back as Jenson Button proved in 2011. That must all seem a long time ago for Button as reliability woes continue to dog his season. He starts at the back after energy-recovery system failure caused him to miss qualifying completely behind Max Verstappen, who has been hit with a double grid-wammy.

Verstappen comes into the weekend with a five-place grid penalty after causing that dramatic collision with Romain Grosjean in Monaco. And Verstappen has been handed a further 10-place drop thanks to using his fifth engine of the year in Montreal – each driver may use no more than four power units per season.

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When I was 18 I came across an advert for my dream summer job. I phoned to hastily line up an interview with the private members club on the posh side of town where the vacant bar role included free use of their tennis courts and swimming pool. “Cashback,” I thought. The job was a perfect fit for my laissez-faire life attitude and I was excited.

The interview was at three o’clock and mother kindly offered to drive me there, but, when the time came she overran her supermarket shop in what could accurately be described as ‘a complete misjudgement’. I missed the interview, missed out on the job and would go on to spend the summer at the local pub-diner where punters fought and chefs bullied fresh-faced bar staff.

Standing in the driveway that day, I was seething. But did I admonish her at a post-race press conference (family dinner table)? No. She apologised, vowed to learn from it and we all moved on.

In the exact same way (other than Hamilton driving a Mercedes F1 W06 hybrid and mum driving a Peugeot 206), Lewis Hamilton was let down by his Mercedes team in Monaco last time out. “Don’t talk to me,” he initially barked down the radio following the catastrophic decision to pit which denied him his first career win in Monte Carlo. Afterwards a red-faced Toto Wolff grovelled: “What the hell happened there? That’s exactly the right question and the simple answer is we got the math, the calculation, wrong. We thought the gap was different to what it was. A complete misjudgment, I am so sorry.”

In Canada Hamilton has the chance to put the events of two weeks ago to bed, much like I did with the incident I regularly refer to as ‘interview-gate’ but which mum doesn’t really remember. F1’s European stint has taken a little vacation to a small island in Montreal where long straights follow challenging chicanes. Does a Hamilton procession to the chequered flag await? A dominant weekend so far on the timesheets, claiming his sixth pole in seven races this season, on top of his 10 point championship lead suggests so, particularly with Sebastian Vettel starting near the back of the grid and the Red Bulls well off the pace.

But Kimi Raikkonen comes into the weekend armed with a new power unit that Ferrari are confident will bring them closer to the Silver Arrows while Lotus – who lock out the third row – and Valtteri Bottas in his Williams showed the benefit of a Mercedes powered engine round this circuit.

But there’s no doubt about the favourite, on a track where he is a three-time winner. Hamilton insisted this week: “I have full trust in the team. We have had pretty incredible success together and one race does not dent the solid foundation that we have.” I know exactly how you feel, Lewis.

Lights out: 7pm BST (2pm in Montreal).