F1 Canadian Grand Prix 2008

The annual return to the Circuit Giles Villeneuve is always an unpredictable event and this year was no exception. During qualifying it was apparent to all that there was a major problem with the tracks surface – the Canadian winters are especially hard on the track, and every year it gets worse however this year is the worst I have ever seen it, with the track literally crumbling in places, one reporter was able to actually pull chunks out of the tarmac with little to no effort, and crumble them between his fingers. The race organisers did some hasty repairs to the track, with some so late that they had to tell the drivers to avoid certain corners during the parade lap so as not to destroy the new resin surface they had just applied to some of the worst corners.

Amazingly the race got off to a clean start, and all the drivers managed to navigate the first two corners without incident, Hamilton had managed to pull out a 6.8 second lead over second place man Robert Kubica when a crash by Adrian Sutil meant the safety car had to come out, when the pit lane opened Hamilton, Kubica, Raikkonen and Rosberg all came in for tires and fuel, but a slow stop by McLaren left Hamilton on the back foot and as he saw his main rivals Raikkonen and Kubica heading out of the pits before him he steamed out of the pits not noticing that the two cars in front were slowing down to obey the red lights at the end of the pit lane (the red lights were on as the safety car was going down the main straight, and stays on to allow the field to pass safely) and as he realised his error it was too late and he slammed into the back of Raikkonen’s Ferrari, shortly followed by Nico Rosberg who slammed into the back of the pile up.

Kimi Raikkonen said “I’m not angry but what he did was inexplicable, I’m not the right person to talk about a shunt, given what happened in the last race but it is one thing to collide on the track in the heat of the race and another in the pit lane when you are stopped at a red light.”

“I saw the two guys in front of me battling in the pit lane and all of a sudden they stopped, I saw the red light but it was too late to stop. I don’t think it’s a racing incident. It’s just unfortunate when this stuff happens. It is a lot different if you crash into the wall and you are angry with yourself. I apologise to Kimi if I ruined his race. I would rather neither of us be out. I was so quick I was breezing it. We’d looked so strong for the whole weekend though, so at least we can leave Montreal confident that we have a package that will enable us to fight for the world championship from here on in.” explained Lewis Hamilton

The race stewards have since judged that both Hamilton and Rosberg were at fault, and will both suffer a ten place grid penalty at the French GP in two weeks.

After the incident the race order was somewhat out of order with some drivers having stopped for fuel and others not, when the order had sorted itself out Kubica was in the lead followed by Nick Heidfeld and David Coulthard, and that was the way the race ended with Kubica taking the first win for BMW Sauber and also cementing himself in the history books as the first Polish driver to win a Formula One GP, not to mention taking over first place in the 2008 championship from Lewis Hamilton.

“If you are the leader after seven races then you clearly have a car that can win races. If you have a top car then you are a top team, It was a great atmosphere and great to have so many Polish fans and others cheering for me. It was very special for me to win here, especially after last year.” – Robert Kubica (BMW Sauber)

“Obviously I’m very happy with second position – very happy for Robert and for the team with our first ever 1-2, I have been with team since the beginning, both with BMW at Williams and with Sauber, It’s great to have the first victory with Robert and straight away to have a 1-2. I think it shows that we are still going in the right direction. It shows that over the last three we managed to achieve our goals, which we did set quite high for the standards of Formula 1.The goal for this year, was winning a race; we’ve done that. Now for next year our target is to fight for the championship, and you can believe that we are all working flat-out for that.” – Nick Heidfeld (BMW Sauber)

“The start was pretty hairy with all the cars bunched up round Turn 1 and Turn 2, but my goal was to get to the finish and get points, so to get my 62nd podium is a great result, this adds to the points Mark has already scored this season and helps us build our total in the Championship. I’m delighted to get a podium for the team; they’ve had a lot of work on at the previous races and back at base. You can expect some unusual results here, so we fuelled it long; but we expected the incidents would occur on track, not in the pit lane. But, nonetheless, the strategy worked well and all credit to the engineers, mechanics and everyone back at Red Bull for all their hard work.” – David Coulthard (Red Bull).

Race Result

• 1.  KUBICA             BMW
• 2.  HEIDFELD         BMW           +16.4s
• 3.  COULTHARD    Red Bull      +23.3s
• 4.  GLOCK             Toyota        +42.6s
• 5.  MASSA             Ferrari       +43.9s
• 6.  TRULLI             Toyota        +47.7s
• 7.  BARRICHELLO  Honda         +53.5s
• 8.  VETTEL            Toro Rosso    +54.1s
• 9.  KOVALAINEN   McLaren       +54.4s
• 10. ROSBERG         Williams      +57.7s
• 11. BUTTON          Honda         +67.5s
• 12. WEBBER           Red Bull      +71.2s
• 13. BOURDAIS       Toro Rosso    +1 lap
• R.  FISICHELLA      Force India   +19 laps
• R.  NAKAJIMA        Williams      +24 laps
• R . ALONSO          Renault       +26 laps
• R.  PIQUET            Renault       +31 laps
• R.  RAIKKONEN     Ferrari       +51 laps
• R.  HAMILTON      McLaren       +51 laps
• R.  SUTIL               Force India   +57 laps